Three Years Later, Precocious Conservative Teen is a Slightly More Mature Liberal
Jonathan Krohn made conservatives jowls flutter giddily when he addressed attendees of the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference at the tender age of 13.
Nicknamed "Lil' Limbaugh" by Time magazine, the wunderkind went on to pen a conservative call-to-action entitled Defining Conservatism: The Principles That Will Bring Our Country Back, which featured pull quotes from the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett.
It's only been four years since the punditry phenom first came on the scene, but a lot has changed in the interim. For one thing, Krohn is now a liberal.
Though he doesn't identify as such, Krohn at 17 is the political polar opposite of his younger self. He's in favor of gay marriage, thinks Obamacare is "a good idea," would vote for the incumbent in the upcoming election if he could, and lists The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The New Yorker among his favorite news sources.
Krohn says he broke free from conservative dogma after getting into philosphy. "It was really reading philosophy that didn't have anything to do with politics that gave me a breather and made me realize that a lot of what I said was ideological blather that really wasn't meaningful," he told Politico.
The Georgia native will be heading this fall to New York University, where he will be focusing on philsophy and filmmaking.
Krohn occasionally rewatches the speech that started it all, cringing as he does. "The speech was something that a 13-year-old does," he said. "You haven't formed all your opinions. You're really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It's impossible. You haven't done enough."
