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- Adam Kinzinger spoke about the importance of democracy during an address last week.
- Kinzinger said that young Americans weren't wedded to old political norms.
- "They're not buying into the Republican/Democrat thing," the former GOP congressman said.
Former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican, said during an address last week that young Americans weren't happy with the party system and predicted they would "revolutionize" the country's political order.
Kinzinger, once a member of the House January 6 committee, spoke of the shifts in the US political system and the importance of preserving democracy during his remarks at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.
While the United States remains politically polarized — evidenced by a slim Democratic Senate majority, a razor-thin House GOP majority, and an upcoming 2024 presidential race that is poised to be very close — Kinzinger said in his speech that young Americans would take the country in a new direction.
"The young generation is unique in that they're not buying into the Republican/Democrat thing," the former congressman said. "They have their own ideas on stuff, and I think they're going to revolutionize this country."
Kinzinger talked about the costs of voting to impeach former President Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection and his work on the January 6 committee, noting that he'd been shunned by several family members and criticized by an old copilot from his days in Iraq.
"We are defined by how we take accountability for those bad days and what we learn from them, how we come back and how we commit ourselves to never do something like that again," he said.
Kinzinger, who served in the House from 2011 to 2023, last year released a book, "Renegade," where he recounted his life from his early beginnings in Illinois to his service on the House panel that probed one of the most consequential days in US history.