As Young Men FLEE Democrats, What Happens Next Will Determine the Country's Future | 8/7/25

When a Generation Loses a Story

There is a moment when a people's memory thins and the scaffolding that once held a civic religion gives way. John Harris's argument about "red pills without roots" names that precise vacancy: a generation of young men unmoored from the rituals, stories and institutions that once disciplined desire and provided a path toward adulthood. The result is not simply political dissent or cultural noise; it is a raw, mobile energy that must find a channel. Where it flows will shape families, communities and the next public order.

Energy, Rage and an Unguarded Male Psyche

The contemporary debate about masculinity often begins and ends with caricature: either pious restraint or unrestrained conquest. But beneath those images lies something less tidy. Men who grew up in an era of accelerating crises—economic precarity, fractured families, persistent cultural shaming—have accumulated a combustible mixture of yearning and resentment. That force shows up in street violence, viral crowd-funding of criminals, online movements that revel in transgression, or in politics that swings wildly to extremes. The striking observation is practical: the energy does not vanish. If institutions like churches, sports teams, and civic groups do not orient it, other actors will.

Two Destinations: Contribution or Predation

Harris and his interlocutors frame the stakes starkly. That energy will either be channeled toward constructive ends—family, craft, public service—or toward predatory behaviors that valorize domination, spectacle and short-term gain. This binary is not merely moralizing. It names social consequences: when rites of passage, mentorship and public recognition disappear, the vacuum invites substitutes that often prove corrosive.

The Church as a Distributor of Meaning

One central claim cuts through the noise: institutions matter because they teach orientation. When congregations prioritize comfort and consumer-friendly programming over sustained formation, they risk producing men who are spiritually sedated. Pastors who shape worship to suit the easiest tastes and who avoid accountability inadvertently act as what some call "spiritual Ritalin"—calming unrest without forming virtue. The remedy proposed is not nostalgia for a particular fashion of church programming, but a renewed seriousness about discipleship: concrete responsibilities, sacramental practices, and liturgies that shape desire and encourage soul-deep maturity.

Tradition, Not Iron Law

But renewing tradition is not a matter of brute restoration. Harris points to a deeper problem: when people lack lived traditions, they will adopt reductionist ideologies to fill the void. Ideologies promise easy narratives and villains, but they cannot substitute for a living communal memory. The task is therefore twofold: preserve and adapt the forms that cultivate allegiance to a shared history, and offer an affirmative vision that is not defined solely by opposition to the left.

Online Countercultures and the Allure of Baseness

The internet has enabled lightning-fast identity formation, but it has also made recruitment cheaper and ideology more brittle. Slang like "based" or "trad" can create a sense of belonging while remaining untethered to virtues or institutions. Public figures who trade in spectacle—professing contempt for liberal norms while offering no constructive alternative—can radicalize appetites rather than direct them toward stewardship. The danger is an aesthetics of transgression that substitutes shock for meaning and leaves participants with little to build when their anger cools.

Race, Resentment and the Perils of Idolatry

Another fault line is how cultural grievance organizes itself around race. When outrages are amplified selectively, communal moral imagination becomes skewed. A culture that celebrates some victims while excusing others breeds confusion and fury. Harris warns that if institutions do not name the idolatries on both sides—whether racial idolatry or other forms of grievance—then reactionary movements will define themselves by grievances alone, not by a coherent civic ethic.

What a Positive Vision Looks Like

The conversation moves quickly from diagnosis to the question of alternative. What are conservatives conserving when they claim a mantle of tradition? The prescription offered is not a blueprint for coercive enforcement, but a call to recover what once bound people: a faith that informs public life, rituals that rehearse responsibility, and local institutions that supply rites of passage. In practical terms this looks like mentorship networks, civic associations that reward competence and service, and a revitalized script for fatherhood and craft.

• Recognition: ritual and public acknowledgement of achievement and duty.
• Responsibility: opportunities for men to lead in family, trade and community.
• Formation: sustained religious and civic education that shapes character over time.

Rethinking Masculine Archetypes

Replacing the caricatures requires a new (or recovered) archetype: not the pious eunuch nor the Genghis-Khan archetype of conquest, but a model of strength coupled to humility and service. An embodied form of masculinity—one that is willing to be gentle yet resolute, tender yet willing to confront injustice—offers an orientation that can channel energy outward rather than inward.

Providence and Patience

Finally, the horizon of Harris's argument is not despair. History moves in cycles; institutions decay and can be rebuilt. That path is neither quick nor painless. The restoration he imagines requires patient investments in people, practices and places. It demands humility from leaders who must choose formation over applause, and courage from communities willing to stand for a narrative larger than immediate gains.

The larger lesson is less tactical than moral: energy, resentment and longing will express themselves somehow. The only question worth pressing is what will shape those expressions—a set of durable institutions that form character, or an unstable set of countercultures that glorify rupture. The future depends on which stories are passed down and which practices are made habitual: the small scaffolds of duty that make a people able to protect what they love.