Feb. 8, 2026

MM#460--Rebuild Resilience: Free Speech, Real Play, And The End Of Emotional Vetoes

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message Feeling overwhelmed isn’t a personal flaw; it’s often the predictable outcome of how we’ve redesigned childhood and campus life. We trace the surge in teen anxiety and sadness to safetyism—the belief that emotional safety should trump all other goods—and show how that lens reshaped parenting, schooling, and university culture. When we treat discomfort as harm and words as danger, we smother the very friction that builds judgment, c...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message

Feeling overwhelmed isn’t a personal flaw; it’s often the predictable outcome of how we’ve redesigned childhood and campus life. We trace the surge in teen anxiety and sadness to safetyism—the belief that emotional safety should trump all other goods—and show how that lens reshaped parenting, schooling, and university culture. When we treat discomfort as harm and words as danger, we smother the very friction that builds judgment, courage, and resilience.

We walk through how overprotective parenting quietly removed unstructured play, risk, and negotiated conflict, leaving kids with fewer chances to fail, regroup, and try again. We look at the role families, faith communities, and civic groups play in giving young people identity and duty, and what’s lost when those institutions weaken. Then we tackle the 24/7 pressures of smartphones and social media—comparison, outrage, and performance—along with a therapeutic framing in education that trains students to scan language for threats instead of weighing ideas on evidence.

On campus, we connect these trends to call-out culture, speaker disinvitations, and the rise of bureaucracies that police expression. A university that treats offense as injury can’t perform its core mission: stretching minds with hard questions and unpopular arguments. The solution isn’t more programs; it’s recovering proven practices. We share concrete steps: restore unstructured play, coach rather than rescue, delay social media, keep phones out of bedrooms, and set device-free meals. For universities, reaffirm robust free speech, enforce rules against shout downs while protecting peaceful protest, and shrink administrative sprawl that chills inquiry.

The throughline is simple: strength over safetyism, formation over perpetual therapy, free speech over the emotional veto. Prepare kids for life rather than shielding them from it, and demand institutions that challenge rather than coddle. If this resonates, tap follow, share it with a friend who cares about kids and campuses, and leave a quick review with your biggest takeaway—what’s the first norm you’ll change?

Key Points from the Episode:

rising teen sadness, anxiety and self-harm linked to cultural shifts
• safetyism replaces resilience as the top value
• speech reframed as harm on campuses
• soft authoritarianism crowds out debate and inquiry
• overprotective parenting reduces risk and free play
• weakened families, faith, and civic groups thin identity and duty
• smartphones and social media amplify comparison and outrage
• therapeutic framing turns conflict into trauma language
• practical fixes for home, school, and tech norms
• universities recommit to robust free speech and due process
• build character through service, challenge and mentoring

Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources

Other resources:

Want to leave a review? Click here, and if we earned a five-star review from you **high five and knuckle bumps**, we appreciate it greatly!

00:00 - Opening And Quote Of The Day

00:38 - What’s Going Wrong For Teens

02:39 - Safetyism Replaces Resilience

05:13 - From Speech To “Safety” On Campus

07:59 - Roots Of Fragility: Parenting And Tech

09:36 - A Better Way Forward For Kids

11:05 - Universities And Free Speech Principles

12:18 - Families, Civic Groups, And Smartphones

13:40 - Choose Strength Over Safetyism

14:34 - Closing And Resources

WEBVTT

00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:21.199
Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:25.120
Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

00:00:25.359 --> 00:00:30.079
Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute.

00:00:30.719 --> 00:00:36.240
As always, let's open it up with our beginning quote of the day.

00:00:38.799 --> 00:00:43.520
Something is going badly wrong for American teenagers.

00:00:44.079 --> 00:00:48.799
As we can see in the statistics on depression, anxiety, and suicide.

00:00:49.119 --> 00:01:10.480
Something is going very wrong on many college campuses, as we can see in the growth of the call-out culture, and the rise in efforts to disinvite and shout down visiting speakers, and then changing norms about speech, including a recent tendency to evaluate speech in terms of safety and danger.

00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:21.760
This new culture of safetyism and vindictive protectiveness is bad for students and certainly bad for universities.

00:01:22.079 --> 00:01:25.120
What can we do to change course?

00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:43.120
And that is a quote from the book by Jonathan Hyatt and Greg Lukinoff, written in 2018: The Coddling of the American Mind, how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.

00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:49.599
And something is indeed gone badly wrong for American teenagers.

00:01:51.200 --> 00:02:07.599
For probably the last four generations, they've been taught bad history in Howard Zinn's horrific high school textbook that essentially blames America for almost every ill in the world.

00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:15.439
You can see that playing out on college campuses and in 20 and 30 year olds now.

00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:26.719
But we're also seeing a spike now in depression, anxiety, and suicide, and especially on the cancel culture on college campuses.

00:02:26.960 --> 00:02:29.840
Where tragically we lost Charlie Kirk.

00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:45.840
So if you are watching the Super Bowl this weekend, be sure to tune in to the TPUSA halftime show because that is probably the only show that'll celebrate America at the Super Bowl.

00:02:46.479 --> 00:02:47.759
But I digress.

00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:54.400
Today I want to react to this quote that ties these trends together.

00:02:54.639 --> 00:03:04.800
And I want to do so from a conservative perspective because it seems like it's the only perspective that gives any objectivity to what is going on.

00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:09.520
So let's walk through what this means, why it's happening, and how we can change direction.

00:03:10.879 --> 00:03:18.319
So the quote from the book says something has gone badly wrong for American teenagers, and that's not just nostalgia for a simpler time.

00:03:18.800 --> 00:03:32.479
What we're watching is the rising rates of reported sadness and hope, hopelessness among teens, more suicidal thoughts and self-harm, a growing sense that young people feel overwhelmed by ordinary life.

00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:38.159
This is not simply a problem of more diagnosis or better awareness.

00:03:39.199 --> 00:03:44.319
This is a downstream effect from deep cultural shifts.

00:03:44.560 --> 00:03:50.319
How we raise kids, how we structure their lives, how we teach them to interpret discomfort.

00:03:50.560 --> 00:03:58.639
In other words, if you change childhood, you change mental health, and we have changed childhood dramatically.

00:03:59.680 --> 00:04:07.280
Now there's a new culture of safetyism and vindictive protected protectiveness, if I can say that.

00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:17.680
And that is this idea of safetyism, uh, emotional safety, never feeling upset or offended or challenged.

00:04:17.920 --> 00:04:21.759
And that is now celebrated as the highest value.

00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:27.040
And it's not just keeping kids from real danger.

00:04:28.079 --> 00:04:35.199
It's to the point where we're keeping them from anything that might hurt their feelings.

00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:43.839
Now, to some that sounds compassionate, but it quietly flips an older understanding of how you form a person.

00:04:44.079 --> 00:04:48.560
The old model was life is hard, the world won't always bend to your wishes.

00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:50.959
So we're going to help you grow stronger.

00:04:51.199 --> 00:04:57.439
The new model is you're fragile, the world's dangerous, and so we must rearrange reality around your feelings.

00:04:58.800 --> 00:05:00.480
That's terrible.

00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:09.839
We should say human beings, especially kids and young adults, are more like muscles than glass.

00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:12.959
They grow through stress, effort, and challenge.

00:05:13.279 --> 00:05:17.120
Remove those, you don't get safety, you get fragility.

00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:38.399
So if you solve every conflict for kids, if you remove unstructured and unsupervised play, if you treat every negative emotion as an emergency, a five-alarm fire, if you teach kids that words are violence and disagreement is trauma, frankly, that's not love.

00:05:38.879 --> 00:05:41.279
You're not preparing them for life.

00:05:41.519 --> 00:05:49.279
You're setting them up to be perpetually anxious and dependent on institutions to shield them.

00:05:52.160 --> 00:06:13.360
So if we go back to our quote and talk about the growth of a call out culture and the rise in efforts to disinvite and shout down visiting speakers, changing norms about speech, including the recent tendency to evaluate speech in terms of safety and danger, we saw that on every campus, every liberal campus.

00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:17.439
And the tragic thing is we saw that with Charlie Kirk.

00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:25.839
He told the truth and he was assassinated for telling the truth.

00:06:27.759 --> 00:06:33.439
This safetyism mutates into something more aggressive, vindictive, protectiveness.

00:06:33.759 --> 00:06:38.319
Instead of saying, if I disagree with you, I'll debate you or ignore you.

00:06:38.959 --> 00:06:47.600
Students are encouraged explicitly or implicitly sometimes to say if I find you offensive, you shouldn't be allowed to speak here at all.

00:06:48.879 --> 00:06:50.720
We know where that ends.

00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:56.639
That ends at the end of the gun, at the at the end of a barrel of a gun.

00:06:58.879 --> 00:07:11.519
So then we see shout downs of speakers, campaigns to disinvite guests, demands for investigations over controversial opinions, bureaucracies built to police harmful words and ideas.

00:07:14.079 --> 00:07:25.360
The core purpose of a university a campus that cannot tolerate offensive ideas is like a gym that can't tolerate heavyweights.

00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:32.720
The job and core purpose of a university is to stretch minds, not to swaddle them.

00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:45.759
When speech is evaluated first in terms of safety instead of truth or coherence, everything becomes about feelings and power, not argument and evidence.

00:07:46.079 --> 00:07:50.000
The loudest and most offended group wins.

00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:52.639
That's not education.

00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:58.160
That's soft authoritarianism with better branding.

00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:00.879
So how do we get here?

00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:04.720
Well, certainly a few things stand out.

00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:06.879
Overprotective parenting.

00:08:07.199 --> 00:08:12.959
We took away a lot of the free range and risk taking and problem solving parts of childhood.

00:08:13.199 --> 00:08:18.639
Kids grow up less practiced in handling fear and conflict and failure.

00:08:19.600 --> 00:08:27.439
When families and churches and civics groups are weakened, kids lose the deep sources of identity, duty, and meaning.

00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:34.000
They become fragile and hyperfocused on emotional validation at every whim.

00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:38.960
Certainly smartphones and social media are a new phenomena.

00:08:40.559 --> 00:08:51.120
Instead of grounded in face to face like or face to face conversations, teens are curated into a high pressure group of online worlds.

00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:54.080
Comparison, outrage, performance.

00:08:54.399 --> 00:08:56.399
It all happens twenty-four-seven.

00:08:56.799 --> 00:09:00.399
That certainly is gasoline on the fire of anxiety.

00:09:00.720 --> 00:09:12.000
We got a therapeutic ideology in education, schools and universities increasingly frame just normal conflict and disagreement in a language of trauma and harm.

00:09:13.039 --> 00:09:17.519
Students are taught to scan for danger in words and ideas.

00:09:17.919 --> 00:09:25.519
Put all this together, we get a generation, and we're seeing this now, that feels more anxious and less equipped.

00:09:25.840 --> 00:09:32.559
They arrive at institutions that validate their fragility and weaponize it through policies and norms.

00:09:36.240 --> 00:09:41.679
So the way forward is less about new programs, more about recovering.

00:09:41.919 --> 00:09:43.120
What works?

00:09:44.639 --> 00:09:47.360
What is the old wisdom that works?

00:09:49.519 --> 00:09:53.840
Give kids more unstructured and unsupervised play.

00:09:54.080 --> 00:10:00.559
Let them experience conflict and failure with guidance and not constant rescue.

00:10:01.519 --> 00:10:03.600
No helicopter parents here.

00:10:03.840 --> 00:10:07.200
Teach them that feeling bad is not the same as being harmed.

00:10:08.399 --> 00:10:09.279
Simple example.

00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:17.679
Parents and teachers can coach from the sidelines and let kids try to solve it themselves.

00:10:18.639 --> 00:10:22.000
Certainly, if it breaks out in a fight, you should interrupt it.

00:10:22.240 --> 00:10:29.200
But we need to stop policing every sentence.

00:10:30.799 --> 00:10:35.120
Certainly universities are the ones that have been the moral failure.

00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:44.080
Publicly they should commit to robust free speech principles, especially after the Charlie Kirk assassination.

00:10:45.279 --> 00:10:50.480
Disciplined shutdowns and disruptions while protecting peaceful protest and counter speech.

00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:58.720
They sh certainly should shrink the administrative apparatuses that is devoted to policing expression.

00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:06.480
I mean, the message to students is, or at least it should be clear, you don't have a right not to be offended.

00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:12.399
You only have a right to speak and listen and argue and walk away.

00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:21.679
It's a university, it's a thousand-year-old institution that we have allowed to go soft.

00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:31.519
Certainly you can't fix a generation with just freshman orientation, but at the heart of it all, Charlie Kirk got it right.

00:11:31.759 --> 00:11:37.919
Got to strengthen families through policies and norms that support stability and parental presence.

00:11:38.399 --> 00:11:42.480
Got to give religious and civic groups room to form character.

00:11:43.039 --> 00:11:47.039
Because duty and self-control and courage and service all matter.

00:11:48.000 --> 00:11:56.960
Think of a church or community program that offers teenagers a rite of passage built around service projects and physical challenges and mentoring.

00:11:57.360 --> 00:11:59.759
That's certainly the opposite of safetyism.

00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:02.960
It says if you're capable, you're needed.

00:12:03.919 --> 00:12:05.919
And we may just need to be blunt here.

00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:13.200
We're starting to see finally schools saying, put your smartphone away for the whole day.

00:12:13.519 --> 00:12:22.000
You get it on your way to school, you can use it, and then you can use it at lunch, and you can use it when you're out of school.

00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:27.120
Certainly, parents should delay smartphones and social media for younger teens.

00:12:28.080 --> 00:12:35.840
We should set home norms, phones out of bedrooms at night, device-free meals, regular offline activities.

00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:37.440
Tech isn't evil.

00:12:37.519 --> 00:12:46.559
We're not saying that, but if it becomes the default environment of a teenager's life, we should not be surprised by the rise of anxiety and fragility.

00:12:48.799 --> 00:13:02.159
So in today's mojo minute, we should learn from the mistakes we've made in teaching bad history with Howard Zinn over the last four decades and reaping what we've sowed.

00:13:02.559 --> 00:13:09.360
And we should certainly learn from the last decade of this quote of a new culture of safetyism.

00:13:11.919 --> 00:13:15.679
We gotta turn this around, especially for our kids.

00:13:41.360 --> 00:13:43.279
They can endure discomfort.

00:13:43.440 --> 00:13:45.840
They carry the responsibility.

00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:53.679
And when we train young Americans to see themselves as fragile and the world as dangerous, we undermine them in every turn.

00:13:53.759 --> 00:13:56.399
We undermine the foundation of our country.

00:13:56.639 --> 00:14:02.799
And as we approach the 250th anniversary, that is something we cannot do.

00:14:02.879 --> 00:14:04.399
We got to change course.

00:14:04.639 --> 00:14:12.720
That means choosing strength over safetyism, formation over therapy, speak, free speech over the emotional veto.

00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:18.480
Means raising kids not to be shielded from life, but to be ready for it.

00:14:18.879 --> 00:14:25.279
Gotta build character in kids, and as adults, we got to be the example of good character.

00:14:25.519 --> 00:14:28.559
As always, let's keep fighting the good fight.

00:14:34.799 --> 00:14:36.399
Thank you for joining us.

00:14:36.559 --> 00:14:39.679
We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast.

00:14:39.840 --> 00:14:49.039
Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources.

00:14:49.279 --> 00:14:52.159
Until next time, keep getting your mojo.