The manual for life is dead and gone — and no one told your kids



A colleague of mine recently told me a story about his grandfather. When he was a boy, his family would wait for the iceman to arrive. The iceman — an actual person — would come to their home with a block of ice for the family’s icebox. It was a regular event, like the milkman or the postman, and part of the rhythm of life.

That story stuck with me — not because it was quaint, but because it triggered a deeper realization.

We are watching in real time the collapse of intergenerational continuity.

My colleague’s grandfather relied on the iceman, and his father probably did, too. And his father’s father? Almost certainly. For generations, their lives likely looked the same. They shared the same routines, occupations, habits, expectations, and assumptions about how the world worked.

The world changed — but it changed slowly. Generational continuity was a given, not a gift. Not so anymore.

My colleague’s own life bears little resemblance to his father’s. He works remotely, reads the news on a device in his pocket, and navigates a culture reshaped by social media, digital platforms, and technologies that didn’t exist when he was born. The pace of change has gone from a gentle trickle to a roaring cascade — and with it, the chasm between generations has widened.

The generational delta

To frame this, let’s talk about what I call the “generational delta”: a rough percentage of how much one generation’s way of life differs from the last.

A thousand years ago, that delta might have been 1%. Your father’s life was your life. You tilled the same land, spoke the same dialect, and obeyed the same customs. You learned how to live by watching your parents and doing what they did. The knowledge they passed down was 99% applicable to your world.

By the early 1900s, that rate picked up a bit. Industrialization, urbanization, and mechanization changed everyday life. Still, the average person’s habits and values bore a strong resemblance to those of their parents. Maybe, the generational delta had climbed to 4%.

In the early 2000s, the pace accelerated. The internet reshaped work, entertainment, and communication. Kids no longer congregated at the mall, and many aspects of daily life were beginning to diverge from the experiences of their parents.

New standards were emerging in work, education, relationships, and even identity as digital life began to supplement — sometimes outright replace — traditional experiences. These shifts, while still gradual, began to create noticeable differences between generations. The generational delta may have risen to around 10%.

Today? It feels closer to 30% — maybe more.

Fading generational relevance

We are watching in real time the collapse of intergenerational continuity. Parents can no longer reliably prepare their children for the world they will inhabit because that world is changing too quickly for wisdom to keep up.

A major reason is the all-encompassing nature of modern digital life. Social media has become not just a pastime but a primary lens through which many people experience the world. Trends, ideas, and cultural norms now evolve at the speed of a swipe.

Add to this the advent of artificial intelligence, which is accelerating shifts in education, employment, communication, and even human relationships. These forces are reshaping society so quickly and profoundly that inherited wisdom, once reliably passed from parent to child, struggles to remain relevant for even a single generation.

Let’s use a metaphor. Imagine that every generation passes down an “operator’s manual” for how to be a functioning, successful adult. This manual isn’t written down but rather transmitted through advice, discipline, storytelling, and observation. It tells you how to find work, how to behave in public, how to marry, how to raise kids, how to handle suffering and success.

It’s not that parents don’t have wisdom; it’s that the world keeps moving the goalposts.

For most of human history, that manual changed very little from generation to generation. The instructions your great-great-grandfather had still worked for your great-grandfather. And the manual your father left you was probably mostly useful. Sure, a chapter here or there might be outdated — maybe the bit about walking uphill to school both ways no longer applied — but most of it was solid.

Today, huge sections of that manual will be obsolete by the time a child becomes a teenager.

A parent warns their child not to spend too much time watching TV — only to realize their child doesn't watch any TV at all but instead consumes algorithmically generated content on three different apps they can’t name. A father explains the importance of in-person communication, while his son is navigating a dating landscape shaped by swipe culture, ghosting, and AI companionship. A mother gives her daughter guidance on writing college essays, unaware that large language models are reshaping the entire application process.

It’s not that parents don’t have wisdom; it’s that the world keeps moving the goalposts.

As this trend continues, something more corrosive begins to happen. Children begin to suspect — not entirely wrongly — that the wisdom of their parents is not only outdated but irrelevant. They stop reading the operator’s manual entirely. They toss it aside and begin writing their own from scratch, guided not by time-tested principles but by whatever voices are loudest in the moment.

This breakdown in generational transmission doesn’t just lead to confusion — it breeds arrogance. When you believe the past has nothing to teach you, you don’t just ignore it; you mock it. Tradition becomes a punchline. Elders become artifacts. The voices of the dead are silent under the noise of the now.

This is not progress. It’s a form of cultural amnesia.

From manual to compass

This is not a Luddite’s lament. I’m not calling for the return of the iceman. I am marveling at — and grieving — a rupture that feels both inevitable and unsustainable. We are now in the strange position of raising children for a world we cannot envision, using tools they no longer recognize.

What, then, are we to do?

Perhaps we return to something older than the iceman, older than the operator’s manual itself: virtue. The habits of heart and mind that transcend technological context. Courage, honesty, discipline, humility, faith — these don’t go out of style. They are not bound to the machinery of the age.

We may not be able to write the next generation’s manual, but we can give them a compass.

Because when the pace of change makes everything else uncertain, what matters most isn’t whether your advice is up-to-date.

It’s whether your children still trust you to give it.

David Brooks says Trump buried virtue. He’s ignoring the real killer.



New York Times columnist David Brooks’ recent essay in the Atlantic mourned the corrosion of America’s moral fabric. Naturally, Donald Trump is to blame.

Trump’s “narcissistic nihilism,” Brooks argues, is driven by a single philosophy: “Morality is for suckers.” Christian virtues are for the weak. Nietzschean pagan values of power, courage, and glory are for winners. And although many in Trump’s administration “have crosses on their chest,” they harbor “Nietzsche in their heart.” This “deadly cocktail” has transformed America into an entity unrecognizable from the “force for tremendous good” that, according to Brooks, was laid in its coffin on January 20, 2025.

Trump’s appeal to many wasn’t that he embodied virtue. Rather, it was that he promised to protect what remained of the institutions that made virtue possible.

Brooks isn’t the first to hurl such accusations against the president, though, admittedly, he does so in a manner that tickles my philosophical fancy. America’s moral decline has been an issue of concern long before Trump took office.

But is Trump — or any single political leader — really to blame?

Politics follows culture

Like many veterans of the political class, Brooks puts too much faith in institutions. Both parties cling to the comforting illusion that culture flows downstream from politics. Spend enough time inside the D.C. bubble, and even sincere conservatives start to believe that electing the “right” people or passing the “right” laws can do more than govern — that politics can redeem souls from moral collapse.

But pretending policy carries no moral weight is equally foolish. Ask anyone who’s lived under a truly corrupt regime. Still, culture shapes politics more than Washington bureaucrats care to admit.

Diagnosing America’s cultural decline requires more than scolding a single president or passing a bill. It means examining the social landscape that produced such politics in the first place. To understand Washington, we must first look to the soul of the voters who send their leaders there.

Yes, speaking of a national “soul” risks painting in broad strokes at the expense of nuance. Even Brooks would likely concede this much. Americans are desperately reaching for moral touchstones that the culture once upheld. Those touchstones — faith, family, tradition — have been torn down by the very ideologues Trump was elected to oppose.

Up from disillusionment

Brooks concedes a sliver of the truth, admitting that the left has built “a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent.” But his diagnosis barely touches the depth of America’s moral confusion.

More than 40 years ago, Alasdair MacIntyre warned in “After Virtue” that modern society had gutted the moral framework needed to make moral language coherent. Today, we still invoke that language — justice, dignity, meaning — but with no shared foundation beneath it. Efforts to rebuild those foundations now face open hostility.

When public figures like Jordan Peterson face censure for reviving moral guidance once common in homes, churches, and civic life, it reveals something darker. Americans have lost access to the moral raw materials required to build a meaningful life.

Trump’s appeal never rested on personal virtue. It rested on his willingness to defend the institutions that make virtue possible. For millions of voters, he stood as a bulwark against moral collapse — not a saint but a protector of sacred ground. That’s what won him the loyalty of Americans disillusioned by the left’s assault on the moral structures they once relied upon.

The government’s job isn’t to redeem souls. It’s to safeguard the conditions under which people can pursue goodness, truth, and a flourishing life. That means defending the cultural space where moral frameworks can take root — and keeping vandals from tearing it apart.

Brooks calls this “narcissistic nihilism.” In reality, it’s something far rarer: hope — the hope that virtue can still grow in the soil that remains.

Young people are FLOCKING to the Catholic Church — here’s why



According to several recent reports, including one from the National Catholic Register, we’ve seen a huge surge in Catholic conversions — especially among younger generations. A recent New York Post article highlighted the “growing number of young people turning to the Catholic Church from other denominations, religions and even no faith at all.”

What’s behind this sudden flocking to Catholicism?

Glenn Beck says that people are drawn to Catholic rituals because they offer order and meaning in this era of progressive chaos.

He reflects on Michelle Obama’s infamous 2008 speech, during which she claimed that “we are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history.”

A decade and a half later, and it’s clear that uprooting tradition results in division, displacement, and disorder.

Tradition, Glenn explains, is “deeply human” and serves to “mark moments that matter in our lives” and “helps organize things in our mind.”

Catholicism, which is predicated on tradition, can restore the emptiness our current culture has adopted.

“Rituals in Catholicism — the Eucharist or the confession — elevate this instinct, this need to the sacred, so it’s not just a routine; it is a bridge to meaning,” says Glenn. “That matters because when you have meaning and there's a storm in your life, it gives structure so it doesn't feel like the storm is just going to wipe you out entirely.”

Modern worship doesn’t seem to offer the same stability as traditional worship. The Post article notes that “Gen Z crave clarity and certainty” and are therefore “rejecting lax alternatives of modern worship.”

“Why? Because modern worship tells you you can believe anything; there are no real rules,” says Glenn.

The problem is, that kind of progressive doctrine lacks substance, which is what the human soul is designed to thirst for. Ritual and tradition can offer a solution because they “build communities — like a congregation singing together in unison or a neighborhood block party,” says Glenn.

“We now live in a world of screen and rush,” he explains. But rituals and traditions “will slow you down, make you present in the moment.”

“They're not about rules; they're all about meaning if you do it right. This isn't about recognizing one faith over another. This is about recognizing what rituals do for us.”

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the clip above.

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Women won the ‘war on marriage’ — now they miss the spoils



If feminists were honest revolutionaries, they would change their slogan from “Smash the Patriarchy” to “Mission Accomplished.” The numbers don’t lie. Single women own more homes than single men. More women are primary breadwinners than ever before. The gender balance on college campuses has completely changed over the past six decades. Women earned 35% of Bachelor’s degrees in 1960. Today, they earn close to 60%. Even the norms on sex have changed. Magazines like Teen Vogueand sex-positive feminist outlets will write in defense of “sex work” but would never publish a modesty manifesto urging women to be more “ladylike.”

Despite the “pay inequality” propaganda the left weaponizes to make women see themselves as victims, the truth is that the sisterhood has been victorious. The problem is that women's triumph has come at the cost of the one thing they want most: a family.

Plenty of men aren’t hostile to working women — they’re just not interested in marrying women who act like the job comes first.

Megyn Kelly recently highlighted a growing tension on the right: Young conservative women struggle to find marriage-minded men. The former Fox News anchor said many right-wing men avoid marrying women with careers. According to Kelly, these men see professional ambition as a threat to traditional family life. She warned this mindset could marginalize outspoken conservative women in high-profile jobs.

This debate cuts to the core of the right’s broader conversation about rebuilding the family. I’ve spent years researching marriage trends, and the concerns these women voice reflect real dilemmas. But the men aren't speaking nonsense, either. Many believe that career-driven women will inevitably choose ambition over family. They want wives who share their priorities — not women chasing a different future.

Recent data from the Pew Research Center backs this up. Just 43% of Republican women say society benefits when people prioritize marriage and children. That’s nearly 10 points lower than Republican men. Meanwhile, women are more likely than men to say careers make life fulfilling — 74% compared to 69%.

Men put more weight on family. Twenty-eight percent of Republican men say marriage is extremely or very important to a fulfilling life, compared to only 18% of women. When asked about children, 29% of men agreed, seven points higher than their female counterparts.

Some men may oppose working women on principle, but most simply want wives who put family ahead of career — especially during their children’s early years. Yes, many households need two incomes to get by. But the right’s current debates over gender, marriage, and fertility go far beyond money.

The word “economics” comes from the Greek "oikonomia," meaning household management. The home was never meant to be a holding cell. It was supposed to serve as the engine of spiritual, social, educational, and economic life.

Feminists like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan rejected that idea. They framed the home as a prison, a place where women played “hostess” and “housekeeper” under the thumb of domineering husbands.

That mindset reshaped the culture. The most successful front in the gender wars wasn’t about breaking glass ceilings — it was about “liberating” women from any perceived duty to their husbands, children, or homes.

This obviously isn’t to say women don’t contribute at home. In most families, they’re the ones making sure meals get made, appointments get kept, and the kids show up to practice. But these actions aren’t framed as public obligations. No one shames a woman who misses the mark. There is no social penalty for opting out.

Meanwhile, the standards for men remain clear and unforgiving. For all the upheaval American families have seen in the past 50 years, society still expects men to provide and protect. A man who fails to support his family financially gets branded a “deadbeat.” A man who ducks behind his wife during a street altercation becomes a viral punchline.

Nothing comparable exists for women. Some suggest nurturing and supporting the family are equal expectations, but society rarely defines what those look like. Why? Because the feminist movement made it taboo to speak as if women must do anything in particular to be considered a good wife and mother.

That silence creates an imbalance in the home — an asymmetry that underlies not just policy debates on maternity leave but cultural arguments over “trad” lifestyles and modern family roles.

Society lectures men about duty and responsibility. It tells women about rights and freedom. When a father sacrifices for his family, he earns praise. When a mother does the same, she gets told to prioritize self-care — because a “whole” woman supposedly makes a better parent.

Even when women abandon their families, the media often wraps the story in the language of empowerment. A woman who leaves a decent husband and young kids to drink Chardonnay on Wednesdays and sweat through Bikram yoga on Thursdays won’t be condemned. She’ll be celebrated. Outlets will rush to reframe the desertion as a stunning and brave act of self-discovery. We can’t fix the American family without confronting sex differences. The political right burns energy on gender identity while ignoring a more urgent problem: how men and women function differently at home.

Plenty of successful men marry high-earning women. But no culture teaches that women should support both a grown man and their children. That’s why women tend to seek partners who earn more. U.S. Census data backs this up: Female physicians often marry within their profession. Male doctors, on the other hand, marry nurses and teachers.

Conservative women misunderstand the men they complain about. Most aren’t hostile to women in the workforce. They’re just not interested in marrying women who treat the job as their top priority. They want a wife who puts family first — because they do.

Even those who claim women can “have it all” admit they can’t have it all at once. You can’t spend 70 hours a week at the office and be as present for your children as a stay-at-home mother.

Men make that trade-off because we’re expected to provide. That’s why we don’t gripe when mom gets the first hug at graduation. But every career-driven woman who outsources her maternal role needs to answer one hard question: Is she comfortable with the nanny getting that moment instead?

Yankees to end 50-year ban on beards, will now allow 'well-groomed beards'



The New York Yankees are changing course from a long-standing tradition of banning beards and will allow players to sport beards that are deemed properly groomed.

Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner, son of deceased Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, released a statement addressing the "alteration of Yankees facial hair policy."

Steinbrenner said that in recent weeks he spoke to many current and former Yankees from different eras to get their perspective on the team's "long-standing facial hair and grooming policy."

The Yankees have traditionally banned players from having beards or long hair, a tradition that dates back to the 1970s, according to the New York Times.

George Steinbrenner reportedly started the policy because he believed neater facial hair would increase the professionalism and discipline levels of his players. The Yankees' policy was deemed among the most strict of any rules of its kind in the sports world and therefore was one of the most famous team policies.

Hal Steinbrenner said ongoing internal dialogue had been taking place for "several years," but the decision ultimately lands at his feet. He revealed in his statement that he concluded that some beards would be authorized by the team.

"After great consideration, we will be amending our expectations to allow our players and uniformed personnel to have well-groomed beards moving forward. It is the appropriate time to move beyond the familiar comfort of our former policy."

— (@)

Former Yankees player Cameron Maybin said in 2023 that fans might be "surprised how much more attractive the Yankees would be" if the team got rid of its facial hair restrictions.

However, Maybin had a more cordial reaction to the rule than former Yankee Don Mattingly in 1991. The team captain was allegedly pulled from the lineup because he wouldn't cut his hair.

He was quoted as saying he was "overwhelmed by the pettiness" of the situation. He soon relented, the New York Times stated. The ordeal soon reached the status of cultural event when it was parodied on "The Simpsons" in 1992. After notoriously evil power plant owner Mr. Burns created his own work baseball team, Mattingly was included and subsequently kicked off the team for not trimming his sideburns.

Don Mattingly in 1991. Focus on Sports/Getty Images

"Mattingly, I thought I told you to trim those sideburns! Go home! You're off the team for good!" Mr. Burns yelled at Mattingly, who had shaved the sides of his head out of confusion.

Other rules in a similar vein have included the Chicago Bulls' headband ban that spanned from 2004 to 2016. Coach Scott Skiles made the move after reportedly being unhappy with forward Eddie Robinson's attitude and effort. Skiles did allow center Ben Wallace to break the rule in 2007, claiming he "left it up to the guys who have been here if they wanted to make an exception for Ben."

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The awesome AI future JD Vance just announced depends on one thing he didn’t mention: Church



After the stifling and censorious technology despotism of the Biden administration, Vice President JD Vance’s fresh declaration in Paris of a golden age of American AI greatness was a huge breath of fresh air.

In a tight, concise, authoritative way, Vance told world leaders the U.S. would put its shoulder behind the free, fruitful, and forceful development of AI, applied not just to cyberspace but the brick-and-mortar world in which we all (still!) live.

It’s exactly what’s needed now, because technology is advancing one way or the other, and the crucial choice is exactly which ways and to which ends.

'AI doomers' today rightfully intuit that mandatory love for AI without limits will lead to a perversely worshipful post-human servitude at the feet of increasingly alien machines. But they wrongly believe that our only alternative is compulsory hate for AI instead of love — 'calling in the airstrikes' on AI data centers, as one prominent doomer has demanded.

Vance made the crucial point that the U.S. is dedicated to ensuring AI does not rain down a jobs apocalypse but rather keeps Americans richly engaged with their tools and with one another in productive activity — economic life that protects and strengthens our form of government, our way of life, and our humanity itself.

But while perhaps space and time did not permit him to go into the details about how that golden outcome would be achieved, the simple answer — church — is one that didn’t make it into the speech.

The reason for that is probably obvious: America’s long-lingering belief that a robust and thriving church in public life moves us inexorably toward theocracy, whether that’s seen as a bad thing or a good one.

This is a part of our Anglo legacy we should be willing and able to part with. Medieval and ancient Christian tradition, stretching across the millennia, is mixed on the theocracy issue. But in the East, where the fall of Rome led in a different direction from papacy combined with monarchy, an anti-theocratic line of political theology emerged that idealized not a fusion of strong church and state but a harmony between a healthy church and a healthy state.

This ideal of “symphonia,” as the Greeks called it, is important because, unlike theocracy, it’s in harmony with our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our popular sentiment that theocracy is indeed a bad thing. But it’s even more important now because neither technology nor politics, no matter how “great,” is sufficient to ensure that people actually WANT to work as human beings toward human ends in an age of pervasive AI — and that they have the avenues to freely and fruitfully do so.

The reason for this is plain to see. “AI doomers” today rightfully intuit that mandatory love for AI without limits will lead to a perversely worshipful post-human servitude at the feet of increasingly alien machines. But they wrongly believe that our only alternative is compulsory hate for AI instead of love — “calling in the airstrikes” on AI data centers, as one prominent doomer has demanded.

People nervously standing between love and hate looking for a way forward often fearfully ask what’s stopping us from destroying all of our jobs and losing our human identity to the machines. The answer is ... nothing!

Even or especially from the standpoint of the Christian worship of the triune God as an incomprehensibly loving father and master who made us in his image, our free will leaves us capable of committing suicide, whether one at a time or en masse.

Christ himself taught his disciples that, at the very end, a small remnant of the faithful will remain, so in that sense, Christians shouldn’t fear that humanity will really ever wipe itself out. But the prospect of vast multitudes choosing death and disfigurement over the way, the truth, and the life should be enough for us to think soberly about what it is that can actually ensure we adopt the healthy attitude toward AI in which Vance grounds his vision.

And all evidence today indicates that technology has already developed to an extent and in a direction that causes everyone on Earth to face once again the ultimate questions about who we are and why — and why we should bother going on with the human condition of spiritual suffering and struggle that defines us regardless of how much money or cool stuff we have.

The common experience of mankind is now one of recognizing that an anarchic, disorganized, and improvised spiritual reaction to this sobering technological situation will not be enough to foster the spiritual health people need to avoid slipping into death and disfigurement through an abuse of technology, whether for the sake of servitude, mastery, or the heady mix of sadomasochism that has always perverted the human mind, heart, and soul.

Fortunately, that’s what church is there to ameliorate, counteract, and prevent. The Lord has been known since the beginning as the physician of our souls and bodies. Without the church (and its monasteries) playing the decisive role of spiritual hospital unlike any secular substitute or simulation thereof, there just won’t be enough of an organized structure for people to humbly muster the shared spiritual strength needed to accept our given bodies and souls as a sacred gift that must be embraced with love and obedience even amid the utopian candyland of an AI-augmented golden age.

It’s essential for us to remember that this decisive role of what critics often too abstractly call “organized religion” is not only possible without theocracy but is impossible in America with theocracy. The ancient ideal of “symphonia” is back — and, amid the great American renaissance laid out by Vance, it’s on track to be more important than ever.

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