Unlike many in the crowd, Dreher, then 58, was not a staunch Donald Trump supporter; he had long criticized the president and came around only at the beginning of his second term, after concluding that Trump’s crude energy was needed to defeat progressive ideas. But Dreher has been giving voice to the yearnings and frustrations of religious conservatives for many years—as a magazine blogger with more than 1 million pageviews a month, an author of best-selling books, and a deliriously verbose writer on Substack. In January he joined The Free Press as a regular contributor. More than anyone else I know of, Dreher offers a full-fledged portrait of the cultural despair that haunts our era, a despair that has helped pave a road toward tyranny.