By: Hayden Cunningham
Daily Wire host Michael Knowles delivered a powerful speech at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit (SAS), urging young conservatives to embrace the growing return to traditional values amid a national existential crisis.
Knowles claimed the US is undergoing a deep-level shift toward conservative ideals, pointing to the resurgence of family values, religion, declining divorce rates, and a new appreciation for traditional roles.
“For almost 10 years now, conservatives have had the preposterous task of persuading people that men cannot be women. All of a sudden, that issue is just over. It’s done,” Knowles told the crowd. He argued that after years of leftist dominance in culture, signs of a conservative revival are taking hold. “Pride parades are getting cancelled for lack of attendance, lack of interest.”
Knowles praised a new generation of women rejecting “the corporate rat race” in favor of family life. “To the horror of the feminists, they are aspiring to be wives,” he said, pointing out the current trend of using the term “trad wife” to describe women embracing homemaking.
“In the old days, that was called a ‘wife.’” Knowles joked. “It’s been so long since normal behavior has been considered normal, that we now have to distinguish it with a special term, like it’s a new discovery. It’s a rediscovery.”
He continued by saying that this return to normalcy marks a broader ideological realignment, where conservatives are dismissing old fears of asserting moral claims.
“For decades, conservatives were allergic to the phrase ‘the common good.’ We thought it sounded leftist or something. Which is ironic because the left hates the good,” Knowles explained. “We were too cowardly to make substantive claims about what is good and what is bad.”
“Now, all of a sudden, this long-standing fetish for procedural norms has all but disappeared. And we are once again, finally, talking about substantive goods.”
Knowles emphasized a growing rejection of liberalism, not just in practice but in principle. He highlighted the eagerness of the current generation to reject these beliefs and promote conservative values, but advised that now is the time to act rather than simply talk.
“We now have the opportunity to get back. We are not quite there yet,” Knowles cautioned. “But we now have the opportunity to get back to a good, flourishing country.”
Knowles warned that America is in a dire position demographically and morally. “We face an existential crisis. Our country is literally dying,” he said, referencing the decline in birth rates. He stressed that talking about solutions isn’t enough. “I’m glad that people are saying that we should have more kids. But you know what’s more important than talking about having more kids? Do you know? Yeah, having more kids.”
“We are living in an extraordinary time,” Knowles concluded. “No matter what happens, no matter what we do. This period right now is going in the history books. What we have to decide, and really what you all have to decide, is whether this moment will go down as the biggest blown opportunity in American history, or if we will be known by our posterity, if we have posterity, as marking the improbable and magnificent beginning of a new golden age.”
Watch full speeches from all SAS speakers on the Turning Point USA YouTube Channel.
