“Young people should be able to focus on what young people should be focused on, which is how to get laid and how to go and have fun.”
So went the “wisdom” proffered last week by David Hogg, the 25-year-old activist and current vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, on Real Time With Bill Maher. What was pitched as a strategic insight into his party’s eroding support among young people — especially young males — did something far more revealing: It captured (and exposed) the moral bankruptcy at the heart of the modern Left.
Hogg’s comment wasn’t a gaffe. It was the articulation of a worldview and a political program that confirms that the Democrat Party is no longer the party that left Bill Clinton behind. The Democrat Party is the party that has flatly rejected JFK’s exhortation to “ask what you can do for your country.”
In Hogg’s DNC, now is not the time to do something for your country. No, now’s the time for your country to do something for you — like give you more opportunities for sex and cheap entertainment.
I get the ostensible appeal, but let’s begin with the most obvious point: This isn’t just bad political analysis. This is a deeply unserious (and flawed) vision of young people, and of all people. Young people — whether they admit as much or not — are desperately looking for more. They’re searching for purpose, for meaning, for something or someone to give themselves to. They’re yearning for a vision of adulthood that doesn’t collapse into endless adolescence.
Even if Hogg were right — that the majority of young people have bought the lie that the Good Life consists of eating, drinking, and being merry — the response from any serious person, much less a major political movement, should be to call them out of it. Not to validate their childish hedonism but to challenge it. To exhort them to contend for the good, the true, and the beautiful. To speak hard truths and to proclaim a better way.
What if, instead of treating young people as a problem to be managed or a demographic to be placated, we exhorted them to love and good deeds? To public goods like marriage, parenthood, and church membership? Called them to lives of national service and civic duty? What if we just told them that there is more to life than getting laid and having fun? What then?
This isn’t some appeal for a fascistic Christian nationalist super-state, or whatever other language the Left may manipulatively throw at it. It’s a call to common sense and the wisdom of the ages, both of which are deeply rooted in the traditions of this country. Every culture worth preserving has known that human beings flourish through duty, not decadence. Through structure, not chaos. Through virtue, not vice. We ignore that at our peril.
Whether it’s a pastor in a pulpit, a teacher in a classroom, or a politician on the campaign trail, young people need to hear what the Left will no longer say: You were not made for yourself. You are made for others. For a wife. For children. For a cause and a community and a country — and perhaps even a Person — greater than you.
Those who agree need to speak up.
Grayson P. Walker is an attorney, former chief of staff to Oklahoma Governor J. Kevin Stitt, and a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He has written for the Gospel Coalition, Front Porch Republic, Public Discourse, and American Reformer.
