The following is transcribed from a speech I delivered to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s class of Collegiate Network Journalism Fellows. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I don’t know if any of you heard yet, but there was a pretty significant decision over at the Supreme Court today.
It’s a big deal. I don’t have to tell any of you that. But I think it’s worth pausing and taking a moment to think about why today’s decision matters.
Obviously, it matters first and foremost, because it’s the first step in building an America where abortion is unthinkable. And that matters because abortion matters — not just because it is the taking of the most vulnerable and defenseless kind of innocent human life, but because, as one prominent conservative thinker wrote in 1997, “abortion is today the bloody crossroads of American politics.”
This is what that conservative thinker wrote at the time:
It is where judicial liberation (from the Constitution), sexual liberation (from traditional mores) and women’s liberation (from natural distinctions) come together. It is the focal point for liberalism’s simultaneous assault on self-government, morals and nature. So, challenging the judicially imposed regime of abortion-on-demand is key to a conservative reformation in politics, in morals, and in beliefs.
The man who wrote that was Bill Kristol. The Bill Kristol of 1997 was very different from the Bill Kristol we know today.
But Kristol, circa 1997, was right. And I’m not here, primarily, to talk to you about abortion, or even jurisprudence and the courts in general. But I think today’s ruling is important for our purposes insofar as it allows us to take a moment to reflect on our position in this particular moment in history, as Americans, and as people who love this country. We are, in this room, occupants of the small sliver of the nation’s ruling class—and especially the elite media—who still see something beautiful and noble and redeeming in our history, our traditions and our founding principles.
In this specific political context, we should also be considering the momentousness of today as conservatives; and for many of the young people here, as those who will—in one way or another—be inheriting the levers of power in the institutional conservative movement.
There have been any number of criticisms of the conservative movement in recent years, some of which I’m personally sympathetic to. But this is a moment to be proud of our history. To be proud to be in this room—not because we, as young people here, have contributed all that much to the cause of life or the defense of the Constitution, but because we are lucky enough to have the chance to carry on the work begun by our forefathers. The ones who toiled, often thanklessly; often in silence; often in the face of ridicule and censure in mainstream institutions; for nearly half a century, and for decades and decades when the possibility of overturning Roe was unthinkable.
And they did so not just because they believed in the sanctity of unborn life—although they did—but because they loved this country. And they understood what an insult it was to the Constitution—and to the men who wrote it—to say that it condoned, let alone mandated, such a profound moral evil as abortion.
All that is to say: We stand on the shoulders of giants. Particularly at storied institutions like ISI.
The luminaries of the conservative intellectual tradition in America, many of whom were writers or journalists or essayists of some kind or another, were all young people once, too. Many of them sat at conferences like these, although they were probably listening to much better speeches. But remember, ISI was one of the original institutions in movement conservatism. And pretty much every single one of your intellectual heroes has probably been associated with it, in one way or another.
Now, I’m young, too — probably not much older than you all. I graduated college in May of last year. And young people have a tendency to think they know better than their elders. I’m certainly guilty of this. Young conservatives have traditionally been slightly less prone to this impulse than our progressive counterparts, because naturally, we are seeking to conserve something. It’s a fundamental tenet of the conservative disposition to be deferential to the wisdom of the past. And insofar as that wisdom is embodied in and passed down by previous generations, we’re generally a little less likely to be partial to the “don’t trust anyone under 30” impulse than many of our peers.
But all of you have probably experienced that there’s a certain kind of radical ethos in our generation of conservatives, particularly in the intellectual circles that we all, to one degree or another, are a part of. You’ve all heard of “Conservatism, Inc.” There’s a tendency to look around us—to see how bad things are in so many areas—and to dismiss the work of our predecessors, and the institutions they built.
I get it. Sometimes, I feel it too.
But I want to caution against taking that impulse too far—particularly for those of us in this room, who will be part of the class of writers, thinkers, reporters, and journalists who really set the tone for what it means to be a conservative in the 21st century. Elite conservatism has always had an insular, familial feel. Everyone here knows each other: We tend to come up through the same pipeline from campus chapters of the College Republicans or ISI to the right wing of the beltway political establishment. We’re mentored by the same group of figures in the same handful of conservative institutions.
What that means is that you all are in a position to be far more powerful than our counterparts on the left side of the aisle.
The average left-wing writer, or journalist, or intellectual swims in a gigantic sea of mainstream elite American life. Being left-wing doesn’t make you special at a university or at the New York Times or the Washington Post. It doesn’t make you special in the federal bureaucracy, or Silicon Valley, or corporate HR departments, or the military brass, for that matter. They’re the norm.
We are the exception to the norm. The kind of young conservative who wants to go into writing, or reporting, or policy work, or any other kind of intellectual pursuit, is a very small and specific demographic. But the conservative movement infrastructure that our predecessors built is very powerful. And what that means is that we are situated to be in positions of unusual influence at a very early age.
We should take that seriously. It’s a cliché to say that great power comes with great responsibility, but it’s also true.
Take my example. I just turned 24—on my 24th birthday, I wrote a 4500-word cover story for the New York Times. Next week, I’m writing a piece for The Atlantic. Next year, I’m probably writing a book.
Some of my left-wing critics—and I seem to have more of them every day—would say that that’s because I’m a product of the so-called “conservative welfare state.” In other words, they’d argue that conservative writers and intellectuals, by virtue of their scarceness, but also because of the enormous amount of resources that they have access to, are a kind of affirmative action story.
Now, in one sense, that’s ridiculous. I don’t have to recite to you all of the mediocre writers and thinkers on the Left who were elevated to positions of influence and power because they had the right opinions, or to point out that the echo chamber in mainstream progressive institutions means that many of our public intellectuals rarely have to actually substantively defend their positions, which often leads to weak and lazy arguments.
But in another sense, there’s something to this point. I’m happy to admit that I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for the fact that I believe things that are unusual in elite intellectual life, and that I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for the generosity and support of institutions like ISI.
So all of us here are, in the real sense of the word, privileged. Not because of skin color or gender identity or any of the other ways that term is wielded today, but because we are participants in something important and unique. We’re inheritors of a noble tradition, built by some of the most brilliant and passionate men and women that our country has known.
Don’t just burn it all down. Be part of building something. Not “building a new world,” like the utopians on the Left claim to want to do, but rebuilding and renewing the America that the men and women who came before us fought for.
What does that mean for our specific wing of the conservative movement? As writers and journalists, I actually think we are uniquely situated to do the kind of work I’m talking about. Maybe some of that is self-flattery, but with the exception of the universities, I can’t think of an institution in American life where there is more of a need for conservative voices than the media.
Now of course, there is a sprawling ecosystem of conservative media already. We’re all in it. But the problem is that we are speaking, almost exclusively, to an audience that already agrees with us. That’s important, too, in and of itself. As I said earlier, one of the most significant roles we play as conservative writers is engaging with, and ultimately helping to define, the conversation about what it means to be a conservative today. And that question is more uncertain than it has been in decades. So the debates that we’re all involved in are important.
But we have yet to really break what people describe as “the New York Times effect.” The New York Times effect, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, describes the power that major left-wing papers like the Times wield in defining the terms of our national political discourse. It’s sort of like the Pareto principle—a small fraction of the population controlling a large portion of the wealth, in which 80 percent of consequences come from 20 percent of causes. A good example of this came last year, when powerful payment processors like Visa and Mastercard barred pornography platforms from using their services. Conservative faith-based groups had been working to go after platforms like PornHub, which were complicit in sex trafficking and child porn, for years. But it wasn’t until a big piece from Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, and then another long, critical piece in the BBC, that corporations actually felt pressured to move.
All of that is to say: So much of conservative media—and conservative politics in general—is reactive. We spend our time reacting or responding to the Left. But that’s an inherently defensive posture. It makes it very difficult to win when you’re playing on the other side’s terms.
Part of all this is simply a question of power. The constellation of mainstream, credentialed, “reputable” news outlets is very powerful. In the short term, there isn’t much we can do about that.
But part of it is a choice. Conservatives have adopted this defensive crouch by spending our time writing op-ed after op-ed about how biased the media is, about what this or that progressive pundit or Democratic politician said, and so on. And all of that is important, to a degree. I certainly do plenty of it myself. Part of our job is to hold people accountable—especially the ones that the mainstream media doesn’t.
But if we do that at the exclusion of other kinds of writing and journalism, we’ll never actually be able to set the terms of debate. And we’ll always be playing on a field where the referees work for our opponents.
The good news is, we don’t have to do that. The thing about the mainstream media’s bias is that they’re only really interested in uncovering half of the stories that are worth telling—and frankly, a lot of the stories they do tell aren’t particularly interesting or worthwhile.
What that means is that there is a cornucopia of stories for all of you to go out and find. Stories that matter, but that aren’t being told. All you have to do is go find them.
Let me give you a couple of examples—one from me, and one from a young friend of mine who I think exemplifies what young conservative journalists should be aiming to do better than almost anyone I know.
The first story: This January, Georgetown Law suspended their new professor, Ilya Shapiro, for an innocuous tweet he posted criticizing the Biden administration’s use of race and gender to select their new Supreme Court justice. It was an absurd, cowardly move, done not because Shapiro actually violated any of the school’s anti-discrimination policies—actually, he was defending the principle of colorblind equality under the law—but because the administration was scared of the student activists who were calling for his head.
When it happened, everyone on our side of the aisle—and even a couple principled progressive voices—called it a miscarriage of justice. But the story was Shapiro’s tweet. That, of course, was how it was reported in the mainstream media, and as such, that was the subject of debate. Even conservatives were backed into the defensive crouch of having to defend the content of the tweet, rather than being able to shift the conversation towards the Georgetown Law administration’s misconduct.
But I found out, via social media and some friends at Georgetown Law, that the Georgetown Black Law Students Association, which was the group leading the charge against Shapiro, was planning to hold a sit-in at the school, demanding all of the things that activists like this usually demand—not just that Shapiro be fired, but that there be more funding for diversity, equity and inclusion, more departments with teachers who shared their ideological commitments, and so on. So I went to Georgetown Law to see it for myself. I ended up getting foiled by security, but I found an Instagram livestream of the event and screen-recorded it on my iPhone while sitting in a nearby coffee shop.
And it was—and I put this mildly—insane. The activists weren’t just demanding that Shapiro be fired, but that Georgetown Law’s entire originalism institute be shut down. On top of that, they were demanding reparations in the form of “free food” and a designated “place to cry” to remedy the emotional trauma inflicted on them by the tweet. But the most damning thing of all was the fact that Bill Treanor, the dean of Georgetown Law who showed up to personally address the students, was completely deferential to them. No pushback, not a word of criticism. Just “yes, of course, you’re absolutely right.” Even when they demanded free food—“we’ll get that for you right away.”
When I broke this story, it went viral. But more importantly, it completely changed the terms of the debate. Not because of anything particularly special about me or my coverage of the story, but because it allowed people to see the actual dynamic that had led to Shapiro’s ouster. The conversation shifted from debating Shapiro’s tweet to debating the school’s response. And in the face of what everyone could see about the dynamic between Dean Treanor and these student radicals, it became very, very difficult to defend what happened. The school dragged its feet, but it eventually felt the need to offer Shapiro his job back. (He didn’t accept, but that’s another story).
Now the other example, which I actually think is far more impressive than my coverage of the Shapiro story, is my friend Aaron Sibarium. Aaron is 26 years old — not much older than you or me. But what I did with the Shapiro story, he has done many times over, and to far greater effect. Most recently, he was there covering Princeton’s persecution of their conservative professor, Joshua Katz. Before that, he broke the story about the CDC, and a number of state governments, using racial preferences in the dispensation of life-saving Covid treatments — a scoop that none other than Donald Trump has taken to talking about at his rallies. Before that, he was covering how critical race theory has infiltrated everything from the medical bureaucracy to the American Bar Association. He’s been a tireless chronicler of how left-wing cultural ideology, particularly as it pertains to race, gender and sexuality, is corrupting American institutions. He recently started a podcast, called Institutionalized, with a friend. It’s excellent. You should all be listening to it.
These stories are defining the narrative. They shift the terms of the conversation. All of a sudden, the conversation about “wokeness” isn’t just old Boomer hosts on right-wing talk radio complaining about some college kid using weird pronouns or something; it’s actually about material, substantive examples of how this ideology, and the power structure that’s driving it, is affecting Americans and America. It’s not just rhetorical anymore; we’re not just talking about politically correct speech-policing. When the Small Business Association is denying restaurants pandemic relief based on their skin color and gender, or when the CDC is denying at-risk white men life-saving antivirals, that’s real. It’s much more difficult to wave away as “right-wing hysteria.” And a whole lot of that is because of Aaron.
That’s all at the age of 26, for him. That’s what I’m trying to hammer home. You all can be doing that. And you should be. Because it’s important. There’s a massive opportunity here. It just takes a little bit of creativity, and a willingness to actually go out and find the stories that no one else is paying attention to.
The last thing I should just say on this topic is to those of you who came into this world hoping to mostly do opinion, like I initially did. First of all, the best journalism advice that I ever received, from one of the movement’s elder statesmen, is, “No one actually really cares what you have to say.” At least at first, why should anyone listen to kids like us? Why should they take our opinions seriously? Before you give your take on the news of the day, or on some big philosophical debate within conservatism, you have to prove that you’re worth listening to. And the best way to do that—and to make your mark—is to actually find the stories that no one else is paying attention to. So the best way in is to actually tell other people’s stories, or at the very least, to incorporate them into the stories that you want to tell.
The best way to learn how to write is to actually do real reporting. To write about real people, and real situations, rather than just to pontificate. And a lot of times, as I mentioned, that doesn’t have to be straight reporting. The best pieces I’ve ever written are “reported opinion,” where I’m making the case for something specifically, but using and relaying real stories rather than merely relying on my own thoughts. And that’s made me immeasurably better as a writer, even when I am writing something that could be described as mostly opinion.
To take an example—this long New York Times essay I just wrote. It was very much an opinion piece. But I wrote it very differently than I probably would have if they had asked me to write it two years ago. I was making the case that the decline of organized religion has substantially altered the priorities and worldview of the conservative movement—that’s an opinion. But I was describing it in the same way that I would report on the Ilya Shapiro situation at Georgetown. I was making an opinionated case, on the one hand, but was reporting, in a very real sense, on the other. And all of the best opinion pieces—the ones that really drive at something important—are, in a very real sense, reporting.
So whatever you’re actually interested in, from straight reporting and journalism to policy writing and work to anything else in this profession, look for good stories to tell.
It’s an odd time to be a young person in America. And it’s doubly as odd a time to be a young conservative. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of young conservatives are entering politics with a sense that America is under siege. Even as we log major wins at the Supreme Court—gun rights yesterday, abortion today—it can feel like the country is slipping away from us. The kind of work that Aaron does, for example, chronicling the Left’s march through our institutions—that’s happening. And those of us who have spent time on college campuses recently, in particular, know exactly how serious it is.
That’s disturbing, to me. No amount of tax cuts, or gun-rights expansions, or even Supreme Court victories seem to have been able to stem that tide. In a sense, I think, that’s because conservatives have been too narrow in our conception of politics. We thought that if we elected Republican majorities enough times, in enough places, they would save us from all of this.
Well, they haven’t.
And none of that is to contradict what I said at the outset of this speech, about a deep and abiding gratitude for the conservative movement. The only reason we’re here at all is because of the work of past generations. And today, of all days—just hours after the reversal of one of the greatest affronts to justice and human dignity in Supreme Court history—we should remember that.
But just as it fell to our predecessors to answer the great challenge of Communism abroad, it falls to us today to answer the great challenge of a militant and profoundly anti-American progressivism at home. And since the defining battle lines today are in the culture, it will be in the cultural institutions where this fight is won or lost. That’s not to say debates about government or economics aren’t important—of course they are. But the work we’re doing, in the media and the intellectual sphere, has taken on a particular importance in the contemporary context.
As I said earlier, all of us in this room, even those of us in the earliest stages of our careers, are in a unique position to actually have an effect in American politics and culture. It’s one of the greatest gifts that we’ve been given by those who came before us—including the men and women who built ISI. Our obligation, to them, is to fight for our way of life today, as they fought for it in generations past.
Thank you.