How the Right Can Stop the Self-Owns

an exercise in imaginative capacity

Photo by Ava Sol on Unsplash

There’s a song in all of my playlists.

It’s so sweet and old-fashioned that on a tough day it can make me start to cry.

It’s about a girl and a boy who fall in love. But the girl’s father — involved in her life as the undisputed and sole authority over such matters — objects.

They sneak around, but not to fornicate — just to talk, to get to know each other better. Their non-sexual intimacy grows until their love is unconquerable, so the boy does the right thing.

The song ends with a marriage proposal and some wonderful news for the girl:

“I talked to your Dad; go pick out a white dress!”

What’s most interesting about this song, however, is how the center-right and right in the U.S. regard the artist — a woman who knows she is a woman, has never flirted with a non-binary or trans identity, has not had her breasts removed, is heterosexual and marriage-minded; and who is, by the way, a self-made billionaire and perhaps the best example of a successful entrepreneur currently living.

Yes, better than Elon Musk, since she hasn’t needed any government loans or subsidies — no EV tax credits, no solar panel incentives, no SpaceX contracts from NASA, no buyouts from the Department of Defense.

The center-right and right despise this woman.

Given the state of celebrity these days, she may be the best of all available role models for young women — she even spends her weekends cheering for her man, a masculine guy who is successful in his own meritocratic pursuit — but they don’t care.

The right collectively jerks off its hate boner every single time she’s mentioned, to an extent that’s truly spectacular — spectacular in the literal sense, i.e. a spectacle.

Many of them claim it’s because she endorsed a Democrat, but this is silly.

Given that is the case with so many celebrities — that the ones who endorse Republicans can be counted on one hand — it doesn’t do much work to explain their rage.

What actually does explain it is beyond my ability to solve with logic, but that isn’t my point.

My point is to try to imagine how things could be different, if only the center-right and right could be led by strategy and not emotion for once — if only they could be driven by something other than a desire to be affirmed and acknowledged by those with power, by stupid and obsequious loyalty to anyone with power who makes them feel seen, and by the deep, humiliating fear that their values are not actually strong enough to win hearts without coercion.

The Right Has An Unmarried Women Problem

Not a women problem. There is no sex or “gender” gap. There is a family-formation gap.

Women who successfully form families do not vote for the Left:

And this is especially true of white women:

Even men who fail to form families split right down the middle:

Every single commentator who blathers on about the “gender gap” is either confessing to their ignorance — they haven’t bothered to study the stats — or to cowardice, being too afraid of being called racist to talk about race, which is the actual immutable-characteristic voting gap.

This is the most idiot-simple phenomenon imaginable, and everyone whose IQ is above room temperature should be able to understand it.

Members of the far-and-away-more-physically-vulnerable half of our species who fail to form a family unit vote for a Big Government to serve as their protector.

Duh.

In other news, fire is hot and water is wet. And in today’s prediction markets, I offer you that the sun will go down starting at dusk and rise again in the morning.

Let’s Imagine How It Could Be Different

Close your eyes and imagine a Republican politician who starts a YouTube channel and puts a lot of Taylor Swift related terms in the metadata so it would get found in searches. You find this video, and click play. You hear this:

Girls, let’s talk about Taylor Swift: not as a celebrity, not as a pop culture icon, but as a woman who made something of herself in the greatest country on Earth. Here is a young woman who took her talent — writing, storytelling, an uncanny sense for melody and message — and built a global empire.

She didn’t wait for permission.

She didn’t sit back and complain about what the world owed her.

She took the gifts God gave her, poured herself into them, and worked.

That’s what we believe in: work, purpose, and earning what you have.

You don’t have to agree with her politics to see the bigger picture. Taylor Swift didn’t grow up rich. She wasn’t Hollywood royalty. She didn’t come up through reality TV. She built her brand from the ground up. She started writing songs in middle school. She got rejected more than once. She learned to negotiate her own contracts, took ownership of her business decisions, and fought to control her own work. In a world full of excuses, she took responsibility.

That’s the kind of feminism we should be lifting up.

Grit, not grievance.

Taylor Swift has never asked to be a victim. She’s never asked to be pitied. She doesn't present herself as oppressed, even in a culture that rewards that posture. Instead, she expresses herself clearly. She makes her case, and when she takes a stand, whether you agree or not, you know exactly where she stands.

That kind of clarity, that kind of backbone — that’s rare.

And it’s actual girl-power!

And look at the life she’s made — not by tearing down others, not by demanding reparations or handouts, but by building.

Young women, this is what America lets you do. Taylor Swift is what freedom makes possible! You don’t need to be the child of a billionaire. You don’t need to live in Washington or New York.

You need courage, commitment, and a willingness to fail forward.

Taylor Swift is living proof that, in America, your future doesn’t have to be dictated by your past.

And with a supportive, grounded partner like Travis Kelce, you can already imagine how beautiful their wedding will be — joyful, genuine, and unapologetically theirs. Taylor and Travis — I wonder if their first baby will get a T name?

So if you’re a young girl wondering what kind of woman to become — look beyond the noise.

Be a woman who creates. Who owns her voice. Who defends her name.

Who thanks God for her talents and then multiplies them. That’s how you change the world — not by demanding that others carry you, but by walking your own path and inviting others to follow.

That’s not just success. That’s leadership.

And we could use a lot more of it.

Will you be one of our new American leaders?

The Remote Voting Controversy

I don’t have a strong opinion on the remote voting controversy. Maybe there are valid reasons it shouldn’t be allowed — though I’d note that it already happened, back when a nasty cold was going around, so any objection now needs to explain why it was fine then.

I’m not here to argue that remote voting should be allowed. I’m just asking: what if the right saw it as a strategic opportunity instead of a chance to throw another tantrum? What if they cared about winning — actually winning — instead of chasing the emotional high of tying every single issue, however weakly, to Democrats or “the left”?

What if they were capable of recognizing a potential advantage without needing to perform outrage for clicks and cable news hits?

What if they didn’t sabotage themselves at every turn — like by telling blatant lies about Social Security and thus calling every single other thing they do into question?

Again, Let’s Imagine

A Republican official — pick one you like — joins President Trump in the Oval Office for a special announcement.

The camera starts to roll, and he says:

Let’s imagine a Congress that actually practices what it preaches about family — a Congress where support for parents doesn’t stop at campaign slogans or Mother's Day tweets.

Parents know better than anyone what’s going wrong in this country, because they see it up close. They’re the ones dealing with broken schools, toxic media, collapsing community standards, and a culture that treats traditional values like a punchline.

Republicans trust parents. Democrats silence them.

We listen to moms and dads showing up at school board meetings; Democrats call them domestic threats.

We cheer every woman who chooses life; they push abortion on demand until birth.

We support adoption and fight for kids to have a stable, loving home; they prop up bureaucracies that make it harder.

We believe that when a parent steps up — whether by giving birth or by adopting — the government shouldn’t throw roadblocks in their path.

So here’s a simple, pro-family policy: from now on, any Member of Congress who becomes a parent, by birth or adoption, will have the option to vote remotely for the first six months of that child’s life.

No hearings. No paperwork circus. No media circus either — just the freedom to be with your child during the most critical months of bonding and care. Democrats had no issue with remote voting when it served their agenda. Republicans are ready to use it to strengthen families: the backbone of this nation.

We’re done playing defense. If the Left wants to talk about compassion, let’s see if they can handle a little consistency.

We’ll start by standing with the people who create, nurture, and raise the next generation of Americans — parents.

This Will Never Happen

For all our talk, on the Right, about how the Left can’t handle disagreement, let’s be honest with ourselves: we’re only better in the narrow sense that we usually stop short of trying to get people fired.

But the emotional intolerance? The allergic reaction to criticism? We have that too.

I will lose at least a few paid subscriptions for writing this.¹

Not because I’ve praised Marxism or endorsed Biden, but because I dared to critique the Right.

Because, for many on our side, the line between loyalty and silence has collapsed.

They can’t tolerate the idea that someone could be with them 80% of the time, and still challenge the 20% that’s dysfunctional, self-sabotaging, or just flat-out dumb.

This is what happens when power is new and unprocessed.

The Right, after decades of being excluded from the commanding heights of culture, is now like a neglected child who finally hears, “Good job, buddy” — and immediately panics at the thought of ever hearing anything less again.

We hold that approval too tightly, mistake it for love, and lash out at anyone who introduces ambiguity, even if they’re on our side.

And so nothing changes.

Remote voting will stay a culture war cudgel instead of becoming a pro-family policy.

Strategic admiration for a woman like Taylor Swift — whose life choices actually align with many conservative values — will stay off-limits because she once said something nice about a Democrat.

But it could be different.

If the Right could step out of its defensive crouch, if it could stop trying to punish those who stray even an inch from the party line, it could build something broader.

Something bold enough to speak not just to the already-converted, but to those still figuring life out.

Even to unmarried women. Even to people who haven’t yet formed families.

Because freedom, properly defended and persuasively articulated, is appealing. A vision that includes strong families, supportive communities, and room for personal agency doesn’t repel young women — it just hasn’t been offered to them in good faith.

Not yet.

But it could be.

If we wanted to win more than we want to feel superior.

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1. It took less than an hour; the truthful statement that government money was part of Musk’s success feels like a criticism and so is emotionally intolerable to people who are so desperate for any scrap of approval from any elite that despite my predicting it in advance, it’s still happening — really think about that.