It is harder than ever to voice conservative views because the left has become so openly hostile. Kirk was brave and paid with his life. Many are not so brave. I wore a MAGA hat on a walk at the wharf and was greeted with profanity. My neighbor flew a Trump flag and it was burned and his property vandalized. I told my cousin that I voted for Trump and he will no longer speak to me. At the Tee Off I was telling a man at the bar why I supported RFKJr and Trump and the bartender told me to shut up about Trump. All my Democrat neighbors apparently suffer from loss of pereripharal vision, when they pass inches from me they apparently don't see me as their stare remains fixed on the distant horizon. I don't think there has ever been such hostile division. I believe it is more important than ever not to let the hostility frighten us into silence and never never never use a pseudonym. Be proud of your ideas and speak them loudly.
Linda: Thank you for putting a brave foot forward and setting an example for others to see and emulate! Heavy ships take a lot of energy to “come about”. But they do. Full speed ahead!
I'm not a Christian, but I hear what you're saying and I admire you for using your real name, which I do as well. To me, the real war is not between different faiths, but between people who feel they are themselves gods. If you listen to some of these trans-humanist globalists, you will hear how much they worship themselves. For me, Christ was a holy sage, but not the only one. When I was a teenager here in Santa Barbara, I had the chance to hear Swami Prabhavananda speak at the Vedanta Temple in Montecito. He had been a force in LA at the temple there. My mother would go there to hear Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and other important thinkers of that time speak. This was my first time hearing him. He spoke about how we need to save ourselves if we are ever going to be able to save anyone else. That rocked me at eighteen. And I have thanked the Swami throughout my life. He was right. I thought of his words just now when I was reading your post. You and other Christians in the world right now have been under the spell of what Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy.” You Christians have been brainwashed into this thinking by Communists. You need to stop this. You need to save yourselves. You will never save the world, let alone this country if you don't save yourselves first.
And Merry Christmas! Here is the most beautiful Christmas hymn, IMHO. I can't listen to it without getting chills and tears in my eyes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT3cfXd3Shk
Thank you, Brian. If people are afraid of clicking on the link, the hymn is . “Once in Royal David’s City”, Kings college, Cambridge. “He (Jesus) came down to earth from heaven, Who is God and Lord of all” and “And at last our eyes shall see Him, through His own redeeming love; for that Child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heaven above: and He leads His children on, to the place where He is gone.”
I am a Catholic and just read the book My Decent into Death by Howard Storm. Really changed my view.
Whatever brings you closer to God Polly. But we really have to stand up to evil Christian, Buddhist, Muslim anyone. Our Christian views are usually conservative. It’s such a shame people can’t get along and in the end decide on violence. Charlie Kirk used words he wanted the truth.
I hope for our future we can all get along and if we have different views we can just talk about it not use violence. I am proud of Linda for putting it out there!
Merry Christmas Christmas Polly I am going to listen to that song right now!
Thank you, Cindy. I will read the Howard Storm book. I had my own NDE this year — I was not just one foot in the grave but all the way in — and miraculously survived. I'm writing about it here, to say thanks for being saved and hopefully to raise awareness about Sepsis. https://pollysnewsletter.substack.com/p/famous-people-who-died-from-sepsis Merry Christmas, Cindy!
Thank you for your article Linda. As you know, I couldn’t agree more. I love the quote: Courage is not the absence of fear but acting despite it. In fact, you would not need courage if you did not have fear.
Charlie Kirk talked about Courage and how you need no training to have it, you just have to make the choice to do it. He also quoted Aristotle that “Courage is the ultimate virtue, and without it there would no other virtues.” If people don’t have courage, you don’t have honesty. Honesty allows the hard conversations, but through hard conversation and facing hard things, that is where we grow and where things change. Let’s walk in courage together and take back our community one step at a time.
If every contributor to "EdHATE" and NextDoor used their full name, I might be able to spend more time at these sites. Thank you for leading by example. Ideas and arguments have so much more meaning when the author is not anonymous.
Congratulations Linda, for coming forward and speaking the truth. These are indeed troubling times for being Conservative and Christian as well. Unfortunately, we live in times whereby the liberal, woke, left uses fear, intimidation and violence in order to silence us.
Our friend and brother, Charlie Kirk, was cut down in front of us and for all to see, solely because of his faith. This is nothing new as JFK, RFK, Malcom X, Lincoln and Gandhi were also silenced because of their views.
Aside from being beaten or even killed, the left will often call out conservatives, yelling, cursing, camping out at someone’s home or place of work in order to intimidate and spread fear. The media is complicit and looks the other way when it involves the targeting of Christians. Today, we see the systematic murder of Christians by Nigerian Islamic thugs.
The time is now to come out and speak the truth, calling out those that have led our country astray. Holding those that would do us harm responsible.
Enough is enough, the time for turning the other cheek is over.
And if you want to experience insanity, take a look at the Santa Barbara and Sola Streets intersection. Are seniors and out-of-town tourists expected to mount bicycles to get through it?
Blatant hostility is the name of the game for those of the other side.
When it was clear the anti car and shut down the street crowd where lying about bike and alternative transportation what was their first reaction? To attack the speakers of truth and official city and county records proving them wrong. They hide the records. They are cowards who when presented truth change the dialoged.
What is disheartening to people like myself is to approach those who state, your comments backed by facts are great, and then in public and fold any support deny you.
For professed Christians to say Merry Christmas and then have open hostility shoved in your face by employees or owners of businesses it is sad.
Three of the strongest supporters of Cars Are Basic, are Jews, took time to question, then review claims, and then say clearly you are right. Two of the three are Ph.D.'s (with international reputations) and one is an acclaimed West-coast Land Use Developer. They were openly willing to anyone why they took that stand. It was their support that continued to have CAB move forward.
It is the hostility from their ethnic group that has traditionally, like blind sheep followed what has been and ongoing failure, that was most surprising.
It is easy to go on with supporting data, how irrational the bigots of the Left are. Their now manifest physical anger and hostility. But I'll end it here.
With all humility and good cheer, Merry Christmas and to all a Good Night.
Linda, Thank you for your inspirational article articulating-COURAGE. Also, your bravery in showing that same COURAGE by going by your real name and identity. Courage is the first of all the Virtues and the others rest on and require courage! We pray that "convenience & personal comfort" will NOT rob this coming generation of LIBERTY!
I wish the"counter movement" would lead by example. It talks a good game, but scratch the surface and the truth is vindictive retribution and rampent corruption. Meme coins, fellons pardoned(Juan Orlando Hernández, Rudy Giuliani to name but two), Failed prosecutions(Comey, james). Even Musk accepts Doge was a failure. The giant ballroom is Trump’s monument to corruption.
Google and Amazon have massive antitrust lawsuits working their way through the courts. Amazon is also suing to get the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional. Apple’s support for the ballroom may be related to its own legal problems — or its desire to remain exempt from Trump’s tariffs. Meta. Is also involved in a major antitrust lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission right now. Meta and other Big Tech companies stand to gain handsomely if Trump maintains his corporate-friendly AI policy.
Cryptocurrency players like Coinbase, Ripple, and even the Winklevoss twins. Coinbase’s is under an active regulatory investigation.
Union Pacific is eyeing a $72 billion megamerger that needs approval from federal regulators. Comcast, needs government approval for the mergers and acquisitions it pursues.
As does billionaire private equity executive Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone.
Companies that survive on government contacts are also chipping in, including Palantir and Lockheed Martin.
The Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of “bribery” to the point where a specific favor has to be demanded in advance of payment. So we can’t say this is bribery … exactly.
But the writing’s on the wall — perhaps literally. These donors are likely to get their names etched into the new White House building itself and have favours in return.
Could there be a more fitting monument to the Trump presidency?
This truly illustrates the decline in courage Solzhenitsyn speaks of.
The small flames of decency that modern christianity has are operating within a regime of corruption. I can not square the circle. How can the "goodnees of Charlie Kirk's message" accept and live within this wave of hatred and falsities that are being relentlessly pumped out into our lives? The left is no better. Both left and the right are guilty here. I am no leftie. I served my country in the height of the cold war. This present regime must go. It is the very antithesis of all that is good about America.
NB:" The Fifth Circuit Court has ruled that the structure of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) likely violates the U.S. Constitution due to limitations on the President's ability to remove board members.
This ruling raises significant questions about the NLRB's authority, but it is not a final determination, and the issue may be reviewed by the Supreme Court."
NLRB when packed with Democrats has been the staunchest defender of their relentless government employee union over-reach. This government employee union over-reach gets checked only when GOP members become a new majority of NLRB members.
Anyone defending the chronic over reach of any Democrat-dominated NLRB as "constitutional" gives away their real agenda. That is the tell.
With just the opposite also being the case when GOP dominance on the NLRB clips the wings of the prior Democrat NLRB excesses.
No one owns any one NLRB majority status quo as "constitutional" - which is why we have elections so voters can change the direction one party has been taking this country which our constitutionally protected form of representative government.
The pendulum swings back and forth. Claiming it can only swing one way - only Democrat dominance is constitutional -- is the most perverse form of "governance " of all. Guard against those who use this as their starting argument.
Sorry DH , no facts support your opinions. But thanks for sharing, Hope this new year gets you to move past treating partisan sound bites as operating facts. Protecting the government employee union status quo sounds strong in you. Best wishes.
Nothing wrong with the majority of the article, but I take issue with the following. "I agree with the idea that Charlie Kirk was killed most especially for his strong family and faith values. He was successfully inspiring young men to become husbands and fathers at a young age. He lived out this ideal with a loving wife, and two beautiful children. Who will model these attributes now?"
Where are you getting that he was killed for his strong family values? You don't even know who did it yet. Also, his "loving wife"? Have you been paying much attention to Erika? I'm not sure people should be too concerned that their marriage should be "modeled."
I find much of what you have written to be, in my opinion, deeply misguided. Let me begin with the concluding point of your post, because it frames the core difference between our perspectives.
You wrote that we must “take a more deliberate stand for the traditional values that support family, community, and country.”
Remove one word—traditional—and we might agree. But that single word changes everything. “Traditional” is used as though it means “inherently good,” when in reality it simply refers to the past. And much of what society once accepted as “traditional” included ideas and structures we now rightly reject.
I am a proud husband and a proud father of a daughter. There is no version of “traditional values” that treats women as subordinate, limited, or defined by prescribed roles that I could ever support. I find it offensive to see women treated as property, as lesser, or as people whose lives must fit within boundaries designed by others—especially by men. Those values were litigated in courts and in the broader culture. They lost, and they deserved to.
Another point I find troubling in your post is the assumption that you—or anyone—has the moral authority to mandate how the youth should think or live. Who are we to decide the path of someone else’s life? That is not an expression of Christian compassion; it is an expression of judgment, control, and fear. A democratic society relies on free choice, not enforced conformity.
You argue that young people have been “co-opted away from faith” by colleges. But your children, like all young adults, exercised their freedom. They chose universities that reflect a broader marketplace of ideas rather than institutions defined by a singular religious focus. That is not indoctrination; that is autonomy. To blame the universities for your children’s independence is simply inaccurate.
Your admiration for Charlie Kirk is your right. But the idea that he was uniquely “reaching the youth” is contradicted by overwhelming data: younger generations are increasingly secular because they choose to be. They see religion—particularly in its modern political form—not as a source of moral clarity, but as an institution intertwined with power, wealth, and cultural control. You may disagree with that assessment, but numbers don’t lie.
Frustration over this shift does not make it a conspiracy or an assault on democracy. It reflects a simple truth: people, especially young people, no longer accept the idea that morality must be dictated by religious doctrine. They are choosing ethics rooted in equality, autonomy, and evidence—not hierarchy or dogma.
If someone chooses faith, wonderful. If someone chooses not to believe, that is also their right. What concerns me in your post is not the expression of your beliefs, but the implication that society must be reshaped to enforce them.
Democracy cannot function under mandated ideology—religious or otherwise.
In the end, your call for a return to “traditional values” reads less like a defense of family, community, and country, and more like a desire to reassert social control under the banner of faith. You may see this as moral revival. Many of us see it as an attempt to impose a worldview that modern society has consciously moved beyond.
You are absolutely entitled to your beliefs. But you are not entitled to impose them on others, nor to lament personal choices made by the next generation as evidence of societal decay. Their freedom to choose—including freedom from religion—is not a threat to democracy. It is democracy.
RE: Your statement "You are absolutely entitled to your beliefs. But you are not entitled to impose them on others, nor to lament personal choices made by the next generation as evidence of societal decay". I'm a little confused by that instruction to Polly...i.e, "impose" and "lament"?
Also, given your comments regarding women...do you support biological men participating in women's sports or engaging in other women activities such as sororities etc.? FYI...I too am a proud father of a daughter...and four granddaughters.
It is harder than ever to voice conservative views because the left has become so openly hostile. Kirk was brave and paid with his life. Many are not so brave. I wore a MAGA hat on a walk at the wharf and was greeted with profanity. My neighbor flew a Trump flag and it was burned and his property vandalized. I told my cousin that I voted for Trump and he will no longer speak to me. At the Tee Off I was telling a man at the bar why I supported RFKJr and Trump and the bartender told me to shut up about Trump. All my Democrat neighbors apparently suffer from loss of pereripharal vision, when they pass inches from me they apparently don't see me as their stare remains fixed on the distant horizon. I don't think there has ever been such hostile division. I believe it is more important than ever not to let the hostility frighten us into silence and never never never use a pseudonym. Be proud of your ideas and speak them loudly.
"At the Tee Off I was telling a man at the bar why I supported RFKJr and Trump . ." You're talking politics at a bar with a stranger?
Better to talk politics with strangers than family, Mr. Brown.
Amen. I also think there’s narcissistic paranoia in some of the people who use pseudonyms.
Linda: Thank you for putting a brave foot forward and setting an example for others to see and emulate! Heavy ships take a lot of energy to “come about”. But they do. Full speed ahead!
I'm not a Christian, but I hear what you're saying and I admire you for using your real name, which I do as well. To me, the real war is not between different faiths, but between people who feel they are themselves gods. If you listen to some of these trans-humanist globalists, you will hear how much they worship themselves. For me, Christ was a holy sage, but not the only one. When I was a teenager here in Santa Barbara, I had the chance to hear Swami Prabhavananda speak at the Vedanta Temple in Montecito. He had been a force in LA at the temple there. My mother would go there to hear Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood and other important thinkers of that time speak. This was my first time hearing him. He spoke about how we need to save ourselves if we are ever going to be able to save anyone else. That rocked me at eighteen. And I have thanked the Swami throughout my life. He was right. I thought of his words just now when I was reading your post. You and other Christians in the world right now have been under the spell of what Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy.” You Christians have been brainwashed into this thinking by Communists. You need to stop this. You need to save yourselves. You will never save the world, let alone this country if you don't save yourselves first.
And Merry Christmas! Here is the most beautiful Christmas hymn, IMHO. I can't listen to it without getting chills and tears in my eyes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT3cfXd3Shk
Beautiful. The power of a church can be such an uplifting experience.
Thank you, Brian. If people are afraid of clicking on the link, the hymn is . “Once in Royal David’s City”, Kings college, Cambridge. “He (Jesus) came down to earth from heaven, Who is God and Lord of all” and “And at last our eyes shall see Him, through His own redeeming love; for that Child so dear and gentle is our Lord in heaven above: and He leads His children on, to the place where He is gone.”
Pol, here's another good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6xZ3k7yHNM&list=RDb6xZ3k7yHNM&start_radio=1
I love that!
Thank you, Mr. Brown. Merry Christmas!
I am a Catholic and just read the book My Decent into Death by Howard Storm. Really changed my view.
Whatever brings you closer to God Polly. But we really have to stand up to evil Christian, Buddhist, Muslim anyone. Our Christian views are usually conservative. It’s such a shame people can’t get along and in the end decide on violence. Charlie Kirk used words he wanted the truth.
I hope for our future we can all get along and if we have different views we can just talk about it not use violence. I am proud of Linda for putting it out there!
Merry Christmas Christmas Polly I am going to listen to that song right now!
“Alexa”!!!!😂
Thank you, Cindy. I will read the Howard Storm book. I had my own NDE this year — I was not just one foot in the grave but all the way in — and miraculously survived. I'm writing about it here, to say thanks for being saved and hopefully to raise awareness about Sepsis. https://pollysnewsletter.substack.com/p/famous-people-who-died-from-sepsis Merry Christmas, Cindy!
Beautiful lyrics very beautifully sung
It’s no great mystery that anyone who makes a huge difference in the world will be targeted.
Thank you for your article Linda. As you know, I couldn’t agree more. I love the quote: Courage is not the absence of fear but acting despite it. In fact, you would not need courage if you did not have fear.
Charlie Kirk talked about Courage and how you need no training to have it, you just have to make the choice to do it. He also quoted Aristotle that “Courage is the ultimate virtue, and without it there would no other virtues.” If people don’t have courage, you don’t have honesty. Honesty allows the hard conversations, but through hard conversation and facing hard things, that is where we grow and where things change. Let’s walk in courage together and take back our community one step at a time.
https://youtube.com/shorts/zveuhNn-5wk?si=AS8Php0A3Wb1ueMd
If every contributor to "EdHATE" and NextDoor used their full name, I might be able to spend more time at these sites. Thank you for leading by example. Ideas and arguments have so much more meaning when the author is not anonymous.
Congratulations Linda, for coming forward and speaking the truth. These are indeed troubling times for being Conservative and Christian as well. Unfortunately, we live in times whereby the liberal, woke, left uses fear, intimidation and violence in order to silence us.
Our friend and brother, Charlie Kirk, was cut down in front of us and for all to see, solely because of his faith. This is nothing new as JFK, RFK, Malcom X, Lincoln and Gandhi were also silenced because of their views.
Aside from being beaten or even killed, the left will often call out conservatives, yelling, cursing, camping out at someone’s home or place of work in order to intimidate and spread fear. The media is complicit and looks the other way when it involves the targeting of Christians. Today, we see the systematic murder of Christians by Nigerian Islamic thugs.
The time is now to come out and speak the truth, calling out those that have led our country astray. Holding those that would do us harm responsible.
Enough is enough, the time for turning the other cheek is over.
May God protect you and reward your bravery
And if you want to experience insanity, take a look at the Santa Barbara and Sola Streets intersection. Are seniors and out-of-town tourists expected to mount bicycles to get through it?
de la Vina and Sola is weird too.
Blatant hostility is the name of the game for those of the other side.
When it was clear the anti car and shut down the street crowd where lying about bike and alternative transportation what was their first reaction? To attack the speakers of truth and official city and county records proving them wrong. They hide the records. They are cowards who when presented truth change the dialoged.
What is disheartening to people like myself is to approach those who state, your comments backed by facts are great, and then in public and fold any support deny you.
For professed Christians to say Merry Christmas and then have open hostility shoved in your face by employees or owners of businesses it is sad.
Three of the strongest supporters of Cars Are Basic, are Jews, took time to question, then review claims, and then say clearly you are right. Two of the three are Ph.D.'s (with international reputations) and one is an acclaimed West-coast Land Use Developer. They were openly willing to anyone why they took that stand. It was their support that continued to have CAB move forward.
It is the hostility from their ethnic group that has traditionally, like blind sheep followed what has been and ongoing failure, that was most surprising.
It is easy to go on with supporting data, how irrational the bigots of the Left are. Their now manifest physical anger and hostility. But I'll end it here.
With all humility and good cheer, Merry Christmas and to all a Good Night.
Wonderful piece Linda. Thank You so much from the SY Valley.
Linda, Thank you for your inspirational article articulating-COURAGE. Also, your bravery in showing that same COURAGE by going by your real name and identity. Courage is the first of all the Virtues and the others rest on and require courage! We pray that "convenience & personal comfort" will NOT rob this coming generation of LIBERTY!
Just beautiful.
I wish the"counter movement" would lead by example. It talks a good game, but scratch the surface and the truth is vindictive retribution and rampent corruption. Meme coins, fellons pardoned(Juan Orlando Hernández, Rudy Giuliani to name but two), Failed prosecutions(Comey, james). Even Musk accepts Doge was a failure. The giant ballroom is Trump’s monument to corruption.
Google and Amazon have massive antitrust lawsuits working their way through the courts. Amazon is also suing to get the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional. Apple’s support for the ballroom may be related to its own legal problems — or its desire to remain exempt from Trump’s tariffs. Meta. Is also involved in a major antitrust lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission right now. Meta and other Big Tech companies stand to gain handsomely if Trump maintains his corporate-friendly AI policy.
Cryptocurrency players like Coinbase, Ripple, and even the Winklevoss twins. Coinbase’s is under an active regulatory investigation.
Union Pacific is eyeing a $72 billion megamerger that needs approval from federal regulators. Comcast, needs government approval for the mergers and acquisitions it pursues.
As does billionaire private equity executive Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone.
Companies that survive on government contacts are also chipping in, including Palantir and Lockheed Martin.
The Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of “bribery” to the point where a specific favor has to be demanded in advance of payment. So we can’t say this is bribery … exactly.
But the writing’s on the wall — perhaps literally. These donors are likely to get their names etched into the new White House building itself and have favours in return.
Could there be a more fitting monument to the Trump presidency?
This truly illustrates the decline in courage Solzhenitsyn speaks of.
The small flames of decency that modern christianity has are operating within a regime of corruption. I can not square the circle. How can the "goodnees of Charlie Kirk's message" accept and live within this wave of hatred and falsities that are being relentlessly pumped out into our lives? The left is no better. Both left and the right are guilty here. I am no leftie. I served my country in the height of the cold war. This present regime must go. It is the very antithesis of all that is good about America.
NB:" The Fifth Circuit Court has ruled that the structure of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) likely violates the U.S. Constitution due to limitations on the President's ability to remove board members.
This ruling raises significant questions about the NLRB's authority, but it is not a final determination, and the issue may be reviewed by the Supreme Court."
NLRB when packed with Democrats has been the staunchest defender of their relentless government employee union over-reach. This government employee union over-reach gets checked only when GOP members become a new majority of NLRB members.
Anyone defending the chronic over reach of any Democrat-dominated NLRB as "constitutional" gives away their real agenda. That is the tell.
With just the opposite also being the case when GOP dominance on the NLRB clips the wings of the prior Democrat NLRB excesses.
No one owns any one NLRB majority status quo as "constitutional" - which is why we have elections so voters can change the direction one party has been taking this country which our constitutionally protected form of representative government.
The pendulum swings back and forth. Claiming it can only swing one way - only Democrat dominance is constitutional -- is the most perverse form of "governance " of all. Guard against those who use this as their starting argument.
Sorry DH , no facts support your opinions. But thanks for sharing, Hope this new year gets you to move past treating partisan sound bites as operating facts. Protecting the government employee union status quo sounds strong in you. Best wishes.
Nothing wrong with the majority of the article, but I take issue with the following. "I agree with the idea that Charlie Kirk was killed most especially for his strong family and faith values. He was successfully inspiring young men to become husbands and fathers at a young age. He lived out this ideal with a loving wife, and two beautiful children. Who will model these attributes now?"
Where are you getting that he was killed for his strong family values? You don't even know who did it yet. Also, his "loving wife"? Have you been paying much attention to Erika? I'm not sure people should be too concerned that their marriage should be "modeled."
I find much of what you have written to be, in my opinion, deeply misguided. Let me begin with the concluding point of your post, because it frames the core difference between our perspectives.
You wrote that we must “take a more deliberate stand for the traditional values that support family, community, and country.”
Remove one word—traditional—and we might agree. But that single word changes everything. “Traditional” is used as though it means “inherently good,” when in reality it simply refers to the past. And much of what society once accepted as “traditional” included ideas and structures we now rightly reject.
I am a proud husband and a proud father of a daughter. There is no version of “traditional values” that treats women as subordinate, limited, or defined by prescribed roles that I could ever support. I find it offensive to see women treated as property, as lesser, or as people whose lives must fit within boundaries designed by others—especially by men. Those values were litigated in courts and in the broader culture. They lost, and they deserved to.
Another point I find troubling in your post is the assumption that you—or anyone—has the moral authority to mandate how the youth should think or live. Who are we to decide the path of someone else’s life? That is not an expression of Christian compassion; it is an expression of judgment, control, and fear. A democratic society relies on free choice, not enforced conformity.
You argue that young people have been “co-opted away from faith” by colleges. But your children, like all young adults, exercised their freedom. They chose universities that reflect a broader marketplace of ideas rather than institutions defined by a singular religious focus. That is not indoctrination; that is autonomy. To blame the universities for your children’s independence is simply inaccurate.
Your admiration for Charlie Kirk is your right. But the idea that he was uniquely “reaching the youth” is contradicted by overwhelming data: younger generations are increasingly secular because they choose to be. They see religion—particularly in its modern political form—not as a source of moral clarity, but as an institution intertwined with power, wealth, and cultural control. You may disagree with that assessment, but numbers don’t lie.
Frustration over this shift does not make it a conspiracy or an assault on democracy. It reflects a simple truth: people, especially young people, no longer accept the idea that morality must be dictated by religious doctrine. They are choosing ethics rooted in equality, autonomy, and evidence—not hierarchy or dogma.
If someone chooses faith, wonderful. If someone chooses not to believe, that is also their right. What concerns me in your post is not the expression of your beliefs, but the implication that society must be reshaped to enforce them.
Democracy cannot function under mandated ideology—religious or otherwise.
In the end, your call for a return to “traditional values” reads less like a defense of family, community, and country, and more like a desire to reassert social control under the banner of faith. You may see this as moral revival. Many of us see it as an attempt to impose a worldview that modern society has consciously moved beyond.
You are absolutely entitled to your beliefs. But you are not entitled to impose them on others, nor to lament personal choices made by the next generation as evidence of societal decay. Their freedom to choose—including freedom from religion—is not a threat to democracy. It is democracy.
RE: Your statement "You are absolutely entitled to your beliefs. But you are not entitled to impose them on others, nor to lament personal choices made by the next generation as evidence of societal decay". I'm a little confused by that instruction to Polly...i.e, "impose" and "lament"?
Also, given your comments regarding women...do you support biological men participating in women's sports or engaging in other women activities such as sororities etc.? FYI...I too am a proud father of a daughter...and four granddaughters.