A blog dedicated to the revitalization of America's distinct civic culture.
Social media platforms from X to Instagram to Facebook have become inundated with a kind of conspiratorial Jew-hatred that used to be relegated to the fringes of the web. https://t.co/SUbYrdzIEG
— Frank Filocomo (@FilocomoFrank) Oct 8, 2026
Zoomers do not care about being called an antisemite. American Jews and Christian philosemites who throw this label around liberally make matters worse. Let low-IQ Jew Haters assume their natural role of being the old crazy man yelling at clouds. Let them be stupid.
— Frank Filocomo (@FilocomoFrank) Oct 7, 2026
I've been saying this for a long time. https://t.co/weVXXlmjze
— Frank Filocomo (@FilocomoFrank) Oct 7, 2026
Statistically, Gen Zs are: - reading fewer books - less sexually active - drinking less alcohol - smoking less than millennials - less likely to follow cricket - dumber than previous generations - not wasting afternoons watching ants crawl so bc wtf are they actually doing?
— microaggression (@mutton2pyaza) September 29, 2026
Sure, this anonymous X user doesn't bother backing up any of these claims, but the general thesis is accurate. That is, Gen Z is "Generation House Cat."
Generation House Cat doesn't drink, have sex, participate in social events, or read.
They prefer comfort. And, don't get me wrong, I get the appeal.
Comfort, however, isn't conducive to human growth. On the contrary, it stunts growth.
But how do Zoomers snap out of this fog?
Conservatism has never been about maximizing efficiency at all costs. Libertarianism and pro-data center/AI sentiment must be divorced from the movement. We are about people, full stop.
— Frank Filocomo (@FilocomoFrank) Sep 27, 2026
Don't speak your truth; Speak THE truth!
— Frank Filocomo (@FilocomoFrank) Sep 26, 2026
Nah, I don't like it. Showing up to a job interview with a grande iced mocha is just disrespectful. Leave your beverages at the door. Generation Sweatpants needs to get its act together... https://t.co/2FsEBJXrr2
— Frank Filocomo (@FilocomoFrank) Sep 25, 2026
Some unfortunate - albeit, unsurprising - news from our friends across the pond:
A new report released by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) paints an inauspicious picture for young people in England.
Commenting on the report for The Guardian, Denis Campbell writes:
The number of young people with no close friends has risen fivefold since 2014 as a result of growing up in a “bleak world” dominated by austerity, the pandemic and social media.
Not only do Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha have fewer friends than in years prior, they're also increasingly discontent with their preexisting friendships:
From the article:
Young people’s relationships also appeared less strong than before. The proportion of 14- and 15-year-olds who were completely or very happy with their friendships fell from 86% to 76% between the periods 2012-14 and 2023-25.
To say these are troubling findings would be a grave understatement.
The loneliness epidemic - in England, the US, and elsewhere - ought to be seen, not as a mere inconvenience or troubling development - but as a national public health emergency.
Invariably, a widespread decline in friendship connotes a weakening of a country's social capital and thus an atrophying of the all-important social muscle that enables us to work together, network, and better our communities and, by extension, nations.
How times have changed.
When I was a teenager in the 2010s, the UK-based show Skins was all the rage.
The show depicted a rather libertine picture of British youth.
Just about every episode involved sex, recreational drug use, out-of-control parties, and general mischief.
While one might come away from the show thinking that English youth are recalcitrant, uninhibited, and impish, they certainly wouldn't think that they were bereft of close friends.
If anything, the characters in Skins were surrounded by an unusual number of friends, albeit not always of the best moral standing.
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| Skins UK cast |
Less is not always more.
We've all heard that Americans are drinking and smoking less.
What's more, the teenage birth rate in the US continues to fall.
To be sure, these are all positive developments.
In some ways, though, the decline in drinking, smoking, and teen pregnancies indicates a different problem: timidity, trepidation, and a dearth in IRL socialization.
Today, young people spend more time inside, looking at screens. Forget about the prospect of approaching a woman at a bar; that potentially awkward social interaction has been remedied by dating apps!
And, while we likely don't have data on this, I'm sure young people are staying out past their curfews less.
We've taken a generation of mischievous youngsters and have made them into house cats.
What we lost.
In 2018, author of Free-Range Kids Lenore Skenazy came to speak at my college.
Skenazy, for those who don't know, wrote a very provocative article called "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone," which is, you guessed it, about the time she let her 9-year-old son take the subway unsupervised and without a cell phone. All he had was $20 and a subway map.
When Skenazy came to speak to my class at St. Francis College, I thought she was crazy.
I still think she is, but now I see the merit in her argument.
Safetyism, of the sort that Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write about in The Coddling of the American Mind, has created a culture wherein comfort is the ultimate virtue and discomfort is the thing to be avoided at all costs.
Thus, we have inadvertently created a generation of puritans who don't drink, smoke, have sex, approach women, or have fun at all.
What's needed is not a resurgence of libertinism, but of fun, play, and adventure.
Friends will be made along the way.
It's officially been a year since conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood.
Just the day before Kirk was taken from us, on September 9th, 2025, I moderated a conversation between my friends, who have spent nearly half a century in a politically-mixed marriage.
Rick (conservative) and Jeanne (liberal) show us the path forward. Jeanne spoke to how, when she was on chemo therapy, her conservative, National Review-reading neighbor did her laundry and groceries for her while she received treatment.
Just one day after that conversation, Charlie was shot and killed.
You'd think that, in the aftermath of Kirk's assassination, everyone, no matter their ideological persuasion, would come together and unequivocally condemn political violence.
Not so.
While millions mourned, a shocking amount of asocial, chronically-online Leftists took to Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms to mock Kirk's death.
One year later, and they're still at it, posting dances, memes, and other vulgar content celebrating Kirk's murder.
I'll spare you the pictures and videos.
What's More, the newly unveiled Kirk statue in Phoenix was just vandalized with red paint.
These people are sick, and if you know people like this, who cheer on political violence, I'd urge you to disassociate yourself from them.
There is a sickness in America today. One of the asocial variety. This sickness causes you to write love letters to Luigi Mangione, support child-murderers like Lindsay Clancy, and produce satire about the assassination of a father of two children.
These people are sick and need healing.
Some things can't be fixed at the ballot box.
What plagues us today is spiritual.
Let us hope and pray for better days to come.
Over the last week or so, my social media feeds have been inundated with tributes to the late, great Wendell Berry, who passed away at the age of 92 on August 31st.
I only really got into Berry a year or so ago.
He was, by all means, a great man of letters.
A Southern agrarian and communitarian at heart, Berry taught us that life wasn't just about expediency, efficiency, and bigness. Rather, his writings centered around home, rootedness, neighborliness, and good husbandry.
He despised the fast-paced industrialized life of Northern cities.
A cosmopolitan life, to Berry, was one devoid of meaning.
Born and raised on his family farm in Kentucky, Berry understood that place, people, and nature, above all, were what gave one meaning and purpose.
The migration of peoples from a rooted life in the agrarian South to a hyper-industrialized and impersonal life of a Northerner corroded the soul.
I read and loved The Unsettling of America, The Need to Be Whole, and a few of Berry's essays, including his famous Luddite lament: Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.
A Jewish-Italian from Brooklyn, Berry let me into a world that I knew nothing about.
What did I know about the cultivation of land or the importance of animal husbandry?
I've spent my life in the "concrete jungle," moving around from one Brooklyn apartment to the next.
No connection to the soil or anything like that.
But still, Berry's prose resonated with me in a deep and profound way.
Why?
Well, because, I firmly believe that, within all of us, there is a visceral need for belonging, place, and communion with others.
Atomistic living is not good for us. On some deep level, we all understand this.
Berry gave words and a voice to what we all already knew to be true.
In his words, "to be whole and free, we must be at home."
Berry is, once again, at home.
RIP.
Beautiful tribute to the late Wendell Berry by the great @PatrickDeneen https://t.co/py3F7iQIdJ
— Frank Filocomo (@FilocomoFrank) Sep 3, 2026
