David Brooks

A, because apartheid really was evil and was worth opposing, but B, going through a protest with sledgehammers and destroying it, that's not America, that's Goebbels.

I mean, that is really thuggish fascism.

But, and I thought they were low rent.

I thought those people were intellectually mediocre.

But it turns out there were a lot more people who are anti-left than there were pro-conservatives, especially as the time went by.

And so what you have in the Trump administration is people with the same profile as the Dartmouth Review crowd.

They went to elite schools, but they hated what they found there.

That's Steve Miller, who went to Duke.

That's Pete Hegseth, who went to Princeton.

That's J.D.

Vance, who went to Yale Law.

You can go down the list.

It's Elon Musk and Donald Trump went to Penn.

And so these are not pro-conservative.

These are oppositional nihilists who hate the liberal establishment.

And I found it easy when I was saying college to be more conservative than my professors, but still have reverence for their learning.

But these people do not have reverence for learning.

They just want to offend the bourgeoisie.

And so that's what it's become.

And then they've produced spawn of young people who just think that's cool, that's edgy.