Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Part I

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When You Know There Is More to the Story: Looking at a Big Story at The Washington Post

Events are happening very fast. Headlines are spreading and interpretations are spreading as well. It is incumbent upon Christians. It’s a part of our responsibility to try to understand these things rightly and to know the signs of the times and to understand what really is going on.

And the Wall Street Journal just in recent days ran a piece with a headline, “Charlie Kirk’s Death Unites a Global Right that Sees Its Movement Under Siege.” Vera Bergengruen is the reporter, and I think this is a big story. I think this is one of those headlines that deserve some attention. We are told that the assassination of Charlie Kirk “unites a global right,” that is global conservatism that sees its movement under siege.

Now, she goes on to talk about why this is the case. And it’s not just the assassination of Charlie Kirk in this country that has significance. It is also significant actions being taken elsewhere. You have Conservatives in many countries being arrested for what amounts to hate speech or thought crimes. You do have a cancel culture very much in place. And this is something that has of course arisen to Conservative attention long ago.

And in this sense we just need to understand that when you have Conservative use in this phrase, Christian is also very much associated because for instance, so many of these things have to do with any kind of negative statement about say transgender identity. And so if you dare to speak out against the legitimacy of transgender claims, then you’re going to be accused of hate speech. And you also see the fact that across much of Europe, you have a resurgent Conservative energy among the electorate. But in nations like Germany, you have the very real threat that the prevailing government is simply going to disqualify Conservative parties from participating in the political equation.

That same thing is not possible in the United States, but there are other efforts to try to shut down Conservative speech. The assassination of Charlie Kirk clearly has been one of those culturally clarifying and culturally catalyzing. That is to say it’s going to bring about change events in our culture. I want to go back to that Wall Street Journal article and it raises the question of why Conservatives would feel under siege. Well, the answer to that should be fairly obvious, but it is also, it implies a warning to Conservatives lest we over-read the situation in terms of say, an organized opposition.

I think the better way to understand this is that the cultural powers that be are overwhelmingly Liberal. And frankly, they believe what they’re saying. They’re making their commitments transparently clear. And so in this sense, I think the basic Conservative complaint is right. The basic instinct is correct, but it’s not something that’s going to be easily remedied. It’s going to be a very, very long process of confronting these secular progressivist ideologically leftist claims one by one over a sustained period of time.

And you can see the kickback coming from the Left. And that kickback is I think not only seen in some of the most heartbreaking headline events, it is seen in the Liberal response to it, the Progressivist response to it. So for instance, very important development that was announced yesterday, The Washington Post fired an opinion columnist for making statements related to and indeed attributed to Charlie Kirk. Now, what I want us to see here is that there’s a lot more to the story than meets the eye. And I also want us to see that how the story is being presented in the mainstream media is really kind of far afield from what we should understand at the center of our attention.

So let’s consider the fact that The Washington Post took the action. The New York Times reported on it. So that’s another interesting thing. Major media reporting on events in other major media. Now remember that a lot of the elite media, the Liberal media, is very, very suspect about The Washington Post precisely because it’s been bought by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and someone who contributed, for example, to the inaugural events for President Donald Trump and someone who has given instructions to the editorial staff at The Washington Post that are very disliked by the Liberal elite. And that led to the resignation of an editor there. But this isn’t a resignation, this is a firing, at least according to the columnist who was fired.

Benjamin Mullin wrote the piece for the New York Times telling us, “Karen Atiyah, an opinion columnist for The Washington Post, said she was fired last week after posting on social media about gun violence and ‘racial double standards’ following the assassination of the right wing influencer Charlie Kirk.” So then the times goes on to attribute to her a statement made on Substack, “Ms. Atiyah cited several social media posts made in the wake of Mr. Kirk’s death that expressed antipathy towards political violence and frustration with the lack of effort to curb gun violence. In one post she criticized inaction from white America, which she said, ‘Is not going to do what it needs to do to get rid of guns in their country.'”

Now, specifically she said that The Post had fired her because of social media posts that were “unacceptable, represented gross misconduct,” and went on to say they endangered the physical safety of colleagues. She rejects the charges according to the New York Times. So what exactly took place? Listen to this: one post from this Washington Post, former Washington Post writer “cited Mr. Kirk’s remarks about Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court Justice, and Sheila Jackson Lee, the former congresswoman from Texas, saying they did not have ‘the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.'”

Well, all right, what’s really important to see here is that in the New York Times article about the firing of The Washington Post columnist, they cite the columnist as saying she was fired basically without cause for making statements that she presented as factual. And honestly, if you just look at the mainstream media critiquing the mainstream media, you’re not going to get to the bottom of this.

I’m indebted to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air because he did the work of actually tracing this down to its sources. And what he discovered and made very clear and documented is the fact that Karen Atiyah actually misquoted Charlie Kirk and did so intentionally. She changed the quote from an article that as he pointed out, had been done in haste at The Guardian, a Liberal newspaper in Britain. And thus without any kind of additional sourcing, she changed the quote, what she posted at Bluesky, a social media platform actually put quotation marks around the statement that specifically in that word order, Charlie Kirk didn’t say.

And so that’s one of the interesting things we’re dealing with right now. And I think there are several other cases in which you have similar things going on right now. And it is a war of social media posts and headlines and memes. It’s a new world we’re living in, and quite frankly, sometimes it’s hard to just get to the bottom of things and figure out what really is going on. But what we have here is the fact that when something like that is pretty easy to document, it is interesting that the mainstream media hasn’t really gone after that issue, even as they do deal with some kind of news coverage about the fact that this opinion columnist was fired.

Now, Charlie Kirk made many strong even incendiary statements. That was actually how he built his platform and it was how he communicated with his very energetic young audience. And it’s one thing if you’re going to enter the battle of ideas and do so, honestly, it’s a very different thing if you’re going to enter the battle of ideas dishonestly. And in particular, it is very interesting, we should note this. There are people who are listening carefully to all these words, who are looking at all these words, who are looking at these kinds of posts. And when they see something wrong, they’re calling for action. And it is interesting that apparently even The Washington Post in this case did take action.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Karen Atiyah would severely disagree with Charlie Kirk on any number of things. And quite frankly, Charlie Kirk understood that. He intended to make arguments. He invited people to disagree with him, but to do so with words. This goes both ways, Liberal, Conservative, what we owe each other is at the very least quoting each other correctly. It’s one of the reasons why on this program I give you the sources, you can go to the links yourself. I am doing my best to quote people as they are rightly to be quoted.

Part II

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Evangelical Political Engagement: The Necessity of a Shared Project in Civil Engagement

I want to point to something else and that is that the mainstream media sometimes does come through with some common sense and I think some moral sanity and sometimes some real responsibility. Now, I disagree with Ezra Klein, opinion columnist, very vocal, very, very insightful at times, columnist for the New York Times. And I find him very interesting. But if I’m looking for a thoughtful Liberal, he’s one of the people I will look to. And I think he falls into the trap sometimes of thinking everyone to his right is a would-be fascist and including some of his criticism of President Trump. But I’ll just simply say I think he is thoughtful. I think he means to be thoughtful.

He wrote an article and it was a full half page, at least in terms of the way the layout was set, in the New York Times on Saturday. The headline was “Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way.” So that’s a pretty brave column coming from the Left, and I think it deserves mention here. And he went on to argue that a free society is built on the right to engage ideas without fearing violence.

He goes on to say, I think this is interesting, “american politics has sides. There is no use pretending it doesn’t, but both sides are meant to be on the same side of a larger project. We are all, or most of us anyway, trying to maintain the viability of the American experiment. We can live with losing an election because we believe in the promise of the next election. We can live with losing an argument because we believe that there will be another argument. Political violence imperils that.” He also went on to say, “Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics.” He went on to say, “It is supposed to be an argument, not a war. It is supposed to be one with words not ended with bullets.” He said, “I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project.”

I want to tell you what’s so important about that. Okay. I think it’s really important that I draw attention to that particular sentence because he says that it’s important for our larger shared project. Folks, if we ever lose sight of that, we are really in huge trouble as a nation. And I am not minimizing in any way, I think you can figure that out, the differences between the left and the right. And those differences are growing deeper, the divide is growing wider, not the opposite. But if we actually reach the point where we think we are not in any kind of shared project when it comes to American politics, then we are in big, big trouble.

And maybe we are in that trouble. Maybe that’s the point we’ve reached. I don’t think so, and I want to tell you why. I want to give you the evidence, at least what I think is the clincher evidence right now of why we still have a shared project. And that is that we’re all looking to the 2026 elections and already talking about the 2028 elections. In other words, there is a sense that this is an unfolding project and there are battles to come, there are issues to be confronted, there are election campaigns to be run and there are elections before us.

And so if we’re still talking in those terms, we are still talking about some kind of shared project. And that ought at least to be stated. And that doesn’t in any way deny or mitigate the deep critical nature of the issues that separate the left and the right in this country. And frankly, if you take the left and its most leftist and the right and its most rightist, there is very little shared project. But I think for most Americans, and that includes most Conservatives who I mean are red, real red Conservatives, they still see themselves as part of a shared project. If you don’t, you basically got to pull out and start some kind of compound.

One of the things you have to recognize is that Charlie saw himself as a part of that shared project. Now he was sharing powerfully, energetically, convictionally. But the whole point is he was sharing in that project. He was engaged in debate about the next election, about the passage of laws, about what should be public policy. And so he was very much about that project. Are there limits to that project? Of course there are. Let’s hope and pray we never see those absolute limits.

Part III

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The Radical Gen. Z Divide: In Recent Poll, U.S. Conservative Young Men Rank Having Children Top Priority, While Young Liberal Women Rank It Near Bottom

Now, a related issue that comes up right now very hot in our cultural conversation is the meaning of America and generation Z. Generation Z, as Brandon Goldman of The Spectator points out, it’s involved in a gender war. And that becomes really, really clear. Ross Douthat in a piece he did at the New York Times entitled, “Kirk Remade Campus Conservatism.” One of the things he points out is that Charlie Kirk was uniquely effective at leading young men in particular, young adults, yes, but young men, teenage boys and young men, to understanding big political ideas and seeing them in an energetic light that is being invigorated not just by personality but by ideas. And indeed, someone would refer to this as ideology. He definitely was able to convey convictions from his heart to a generation of young men.

Now, the point being made in this article by Brandon Goldman is that it’s a gender divide in generation Z, the likes of which America has never seen before. And there’s some documentation in this article that in worldview terms, I think you’re going to find really, really interesting. So there is a radical divide among young men and young women in generation Z. That means those who are currently aged 18 to 29. So you’re talking about a definable group, it’s about a 10-year period. Generation Z has been, of course, used in the language about marketing and cultural trends and other things, but now it’s hot in politics because wow, is this a story.

So let me give you one example, a big poll that was undertaken by NBC News about the patterns of young men and young women in America when it came to voting. And let’s just say the obvious, an incredible movement among young men towards Donald Trump. An incredible movement of young women in this generation towards Kamala Harris. So you’re not just talking about the fact that one’s a male candidate, one’s a female candidate. Their ideas are what separates men and women in generation Z. Generation Z, young men, very Conservative, increasingly Conservative, self-consciously Conservative generation Z women. Well, not so much indeed, far more Liberal. Okay.

I want to give you one data point. And when I think about this one data point, it just cries out to me. So listen to this. When it came to life priorities, having children, so this is among other priorities, the life priority of having children. How did it rank for men and how did it rank for women? Young women, generation Z. Young men put it, number one. Young women in this NBC news poll put it dead last.

Okay, folks, I just think we need to full stop right here. At what point in human history has it made sense to us that young men are having children number one, and young women in that ranking, putting it dead last? That is some kind of a reversal, not only of a civilizational pattern, it’s kind of the undoing of civilization. Almost every major historian will point to the fact that the civilizational challenge is to get young men directed towards marriage and parenthood. That’s the big challenge. A successful civilization finds a way to direct young men into marriage and into fatherhood. Otherwise, the civilization has no future.

There has been no civilization, most historians will say, in which that has been a challenge for young women. In most civilizations, young women have moved quite naturally into the expectation of marriage. They had that expectation for themselves and the expectation of motherhood and that in the proper sequence. But now, I can’t think of anything in worldview terms more explosive than this. I can’t think of anything more important for us to think about and talk about than this. When young men are putting having children at number one, what does that tell you about this group of young men? Young men right now in generations aged 18 to 29, they want normalcy. They want family. They’re Conservative not only in terms of putting on a MAGA hat and standing in line, they’re Conservative in that they want to conserve human life, human dignity, and the essential function of the family. I find that very encouraging about young men and spectacularly frightening about this generation of young women.

Now I want to say immediately, this is the kind of survey data that comes in. This is about a generational profile. I am so thankful for the fact that there are millions upon millions of generation Z young women who also are putting marriage and family right at the very top of the list. But we’re talking here about a generalized generation, which is why we refer to them in just this kind of way. This is a generalization and it’s a wake-up call.

Now, I think a really, really important thing for us to see is a piece that ran at The Spectator. The title is “How Generation Z Gender Wars Are Reshaping America.” It’s by Brandon Goldman. And I want to tell you this is a really important piece because what we know is that indeed, when you look at the 2024 presidential election, young men and young women in generation Z, that is those who are now aged 18 to 29, the young men went overwhelming for Donald Trump. And as this article concedes or points out that young women went overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris. There was a clear break.

Now obviously there were generation Z young women who voted for Trump. There were generation Z young men who voted for Harris. But the gender pattern is really, really clear. And what’s so interesting is that this basically reverses a pattern that had been kind of baked into American politics. And that pattern had been that young men were in some cases far less committed to some of these Conservative principles than some young women.

And there’s one disclosive issue here that I think is more important than anything else. As Christians, this ought to have our attention. This is a wake-up call. The difference between young men and young women in generation Z, as is documented by a poll undertaken by NBC News. They’re not alone in this, but this one is really, really interesting. The split between young men and young women shows up over the issue of life priorities, including the priority of having children. So “having children,” put that in quotation marks, that’s exactly how it was expressed in the survey.

Now, according to this, the vast majority of the young men who voted for Donald Trump and the vast majority of young women who voted for Kamala Harris, they’re radically divergent on this issue. So let me just read you the paragraph. “The split could not be starker.” “Having children came in as the number one priority for men who voted Trump, but nearly last for women who voted Harris. For young men on the right, family is still the gold standard, the fulfillment of adulthood and the marker of purpose. For young women on the left, children barely register, buried beneath goals like career, financial independence and self-fulfillment.” So now we’re talking about an inversion.

Now let me just point out that in human history, most historians will point out that girls moving into marriage and motherhood is not news. Most civilizations have depended upon that. The big challenge for most civilizations has been incentivizing and corralling young men to move into marriage and into fatherhood. But now we’re being told that number one among young men as a life goal who voted for Donald Trump was having children. Number one. That just is spectacularly interesting. And when it came to young women, we’re told here nearly last. All right.

So that’s a reversal, that’s a reversal of a civilizational pattern. And I think it has a lot to do with what’s going on right now in terms of what both young men and young women are noticing. And so young women in generation Z, they’re increasingly Progressivist and they are increasingly self-consciously Progressivist. Now let’s be real clear, that doesn’t mean all of them. Thankfully, in your family and in your church, you almost assuredly know some wonderful young women in this generation who have the priority of marriage and family and are following in a biblical set of priorities.

And yet it should be very troubling to us because you have to ask the question, how in the world does a civilizational pattern get reversed? How in the world do we reach the point where we are told the majority of young women who voted for Kamala Harris, are ranking having children way down on the list of life priorities? Let me just point out that that explains in large part the fall off in the birth rate. It explains the delay of marriage and it explains the decline in the birth rate. It explains why demographers are saying we are facing a demographic cliff when it comes to population.

The problem that so many Liberals decried in the 1970s and eighties was a population explosion, indeed, a population bomb, overpopulation bomb. Well, guess what? The big problem going forward is not having too many babies, but far, far too few. We’re talking about several countries, take Japan, South Korea as examples, which you’re looking at a threat to civilizational existence. And in fairly short order, just a matter of decades, because there aren’t going to be people to work, there aren’t going to be people to serve. They’re not going to be people to answer 911. They’re not going to be there for emergency calls. We’re really looking at a cultural crisis here. I think this is very helpfully brought to our attention in this.

I want to credit The Spectator for another piece as well that points to, and I’m going to cite the headline here, “The Problem of the Progressive Middle Class.” Chilton Williamson Jr. is the author of this piece. And I just want to make really clear that this is a huge problem and it’s one that Christians in the United States and elsewhere need to understand very clearly, where’s the future of politics?

The future of politics by definition in electoral democracies or in constitutional republics with the power of the vote, where is the future of the nation? It is always with the middle. The question is, where does the middle go? Because when you look at say, an ideological spectrum in the states, I’m making up these numbers, but I think you can picture, say there are 20% Liberals and 20% really clear Conservatives that leaves 60% somewhere in the middle, which explains American politics.

And by the way, that’s, because a lot of the people in the middle aren’t really thinking about these issues very much. Who knows what priority they’re voting on? But here’s the fact, a lot of this is explained by economics. The vast middle class in the United States has been the source of tremendous political stability. But it’s also interesting to note that as is so often the case, and this is something Karl Marx, by definition a Marxist, this is something that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels noted, and that is that the middle class eventually will subvert itself ideologically.

And this article at The Spectator makes that point. You have so many people in the middle class who basically are increasingly leftist in their politics. They get comfortable, they have a good living, and all of a sudden they aspire to the kind of cultural capital that comes by having people in the intellectual classes like you. And they begin to emulate people who are, let’s just say, far more Liberal.

And the next thing you know, they’re also involved in all kinds of things that just creep towards cultural Liberalism. And they’re accepting of them because they’re in the kind of social circles that increasingly accept them. And the next thing you know, well, you’ve got an LGBTQ revolution, you’ve got the abortion revolution, you’ve got the entire winning tidal wave of lifestyle Liberalism in the United States and elsewhere. It couldn’t happen if the middle class said, “No,” it couldn’t happen if the vast middle class said, “Stop.” But the reality is that the cultural enticements,

Now I want to tell you one of the ways this works. This came up in a situation that I was confronted with just a few years ago. A young man, in this case, a very promising young man, junior executive in a Fortune 500 corporation. He was simply told, “If you want any kind of advancement and it’s basically an investment every two years or you’re out, if you want to be on the investment side of that, you got to play the game. You’ve got to be known to be supportive of the right DEI causes. You’ve got to make that very, very clear. And you’ve got to be on the right side of history. And you’ve got to be on the right side of that evaluation or you just don’t have a future in this company.” Well, the next thing you know, you have that kind of cultural coercion that just becomes the new moral normal. And that’s frankly what those who are pushing these agendas accounting on.

Speaking specifically of the 20th century. I think he’s absolutely right here. Williamson writes, “Directly following World War I, a significant portion of the middle class developed a romantic view of the progressive or revolutionary mind in politics and social thought as well as the arts, and indeed in what it imagined to be intellectualism itself. A disposition it mistook for a credentialed profession and accepted as a badge of sophistication and superior social status.” If you want to up the social ladder, you got to move Liberal. If you’re going to move up the social ladder, you’re going to have to be an enthusiast for all those Liberal causes. Even if you aren’t all gung-ho on them personally, you’re going to have to pull in those convictions and play the game. And guess what? Your children then are the game.

Part IV

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The Progressive Middle Class and the Future of the Nation: Is the Middle Class Progressively More Liberal? Christian Parents, Beware

As a Christian. I want to zero in a little bit more on this, and especially a Christian in education, higher education. I just want to say this is where an awful lot of Christian parents sell out. They are so intent as middle-class Americans in their children having social advancement, that they will make all kinds of compromises to make sure their kids have those advantages. And a lot of this has to do with the social context into which you put young people.

And I think there are an awful lot of young people we lose in terms of faithful gospel Christian churches who are simply, well, the next thing you know, you look at the Facebook page and their values that they are advertising are in complete opposition to their parents who sent them into a situation in which, guess what? Indoctrination and seduction into the intellectual Left is the order of the day. If you send your child into that, guess what? You can’t be surprised at what happens just a few years later. Not only that, but you’re paying thousands upon thousands of thousands of dollars to put them there.

Just a reminder to us that I don’t believe in economic determinism. That is Marxism. I do believe that economics play a seductive role in the part of the decisions made by many, many parents and others to play the game in order for economic advancement. But it’s not only that. I think in many ways social status even trumps economic gain. I think there are some middle-class parents, I’ll say this is the danger of some middle-class Christianity, I think there are some middle-class parents who see as their life aim, their children have a richer higher in social status lives than they do.

And I’ll simply say, I think the future of faithful Christianity in the United States is in many cases saying, “Okay, I’m done with that game. I’m more concerned to have grandchildren.” And if you are, you better make decisions that actually encourage your children to do the things that will lead to you having grandchildren. On that, I’ll just simply say, enough said.