Noel King

And they characterized it as he would go to a college campus and say, you are allowed to have sex out of wedlock.

You are allowed to drink.

You are allowed to do drugs.

You are allowed to do everything.

That the kids in the 60s and 70s like marched in the streets so that they could do like this was cool, but it's not anymore because you don't have to fight.

You don't have to fight the authorities to have sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend.

You don't have to fight the authorities to smoke weed.

The true rebellious thing is to get married.

The truly rebellious thing is to go to church.

The truly rebellious thing is to not smoke weed.

Help me understand the relationship between a guy like Charlie Kirk understanding kids today don't need to rebel to smoke weed.

They actually need to rebel and tell their parents, like, guys, we're going to go to church, and where this country is politically.

So at the end of the day, the pendulum is going to keep swinging, right?

President Trump may be in the Oval Office demanding to have rush hour four and doing whatever he's doing at the Kennedy Center.

But I wonder if already we're 12 months into his second term.

I wonder if already you see the pendulum starting to swing back in the other direction.

Or do you think a kind of conservative culture will hold on for a while longer, be cool and transgressive for a while longer?

W. David Marks.

His book is Blank Space, A Cultural History of the 21st Century.

Peter Ballinan-Rosen produced today's show.