Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Lomez have it exactly right: AI writing is everywhere, and most of what it produces is lifeless, formulaic drivel that floods our feeds and lowers the bar for public discourse. What should alarm every patriotic American isn’t just the volume of machine-produced copy, but the way tech elites cheerlead this garbage as progress while real human craftsmanship is dismissed as expendable. This is not neutral innovation — it’s a cultural abdication by people who value efficiency over truth, clicks over conviction.
Rufo and Keeperman point out something obvious to anybody who actually reads: AI can synthesize facts and spit out polished sentences, but it can’t summon a distinctive voice, moral clarity, or the lived judgment born of experience. Machines hallucinate, misattribute, and produce a bland homogeneity that erodes credibility — the exact opposite of what a functioning marketplace of ideas needs. If you want journalism that stirs conscience and holds power to account, you still need flesh-and-blood writers who understand context and care about consequences.
There’s a political dimension here the mainstream media pretends not to see: elites are happy to replace messy human judgment with obedient algorithms because algorithms are easier to control. When government, corporations, and big platforms lean on AI to craft talking points and shape narratives, ordinary citizens lose the chance to hear authentic argument. That’s dangerous in a democracy and especially dangerous for conservatives whose viewpoints are already bullied off platforms or flattened into acceptable, non-threatening prose.
Worse, the rush to automate threatens livelihoods and the very institutions that transmit our national memory. Good writing trains citizens; bad writing numbs them. The left’s project has always been to reengineer culture from the top down; now they have a tool that can scale mediocrity into a mass cultural product. Conservatives should not be romantic about technology — we must be clear-eyed about how it can be turned into a weapon against free speech, tradition, and honest debate.
The policy response should be straightforward and tough-minded: demand transparency for AI-generated content, enforce labeling so readers know when a corporation or government agency is talking to them through a bot, and resist procurement that substitutes algorithms for human expertise. We should encourage competition that empowers human-centered outlets rather than letting a handful of Silicon Valley firms dictate our information diet. If conservatives want a free and resilient press, we must fight for rules that preserve authenticity.
Culturally, this is a moment for conservatives to reclaim the value of craft. There is nothing elitist about defending the human ability to think, write, and persuade. Those skills are the backbone of self-government and the glue of civil society; to degrade them for the sake of convenience is to invite decay. Celebrate and invest in real writers, teachers, and editors — they are the guardians of a civic culture worth passing to our children.
Practically, prudent citizens and conservative media should use AI the way Rufo recommends: as a blunt research tool, never as the author of record. Always fact-check, demand editorial accountability, and spotlight human bylines that signify responsibility. Build platforms and subscriptions that reward authenticity rather than clicks, and make it economically sustainable for talented writers to do the hard work of making an argument that actually matters.
This is not a technophobic panic; it’s a call to defend the human art of persuasion against mass-produced nonsense. If we want a country where truth, courage, and craftsmanship matter, then we must push back against the complacent faith in algorithms and insist that human judgment remain at the center of our public life. Patriots don’t outsource their conscience to machines — we sharpen it.
