Socialists
This occurred to me...what do you think?
I realize that young people are always more “liberal” (a usage of the term that classical liberals, including our Founders wouldn’t recognize) than their elders but I think there’s something more going on with the rise and success, albeit limited to deep blue locales, of “Democratic Socialists” (aka communists who hate America and Jews).
Yes, they are angry because they got very expensive yet worthless college degrees and are angry about it. Yes, they can’t afford homes and are (with some justification) angry about it. Yes, the Baby Boomer generation has destroyed this nation’s fiscal stability and the young adults are (against justifiably) angry about that as well.
But these downwardly-mobile (i.e. from middle-class or upper-middle class families but likely to earn less than their parents because they decided to major in comparative literature or gender studies) and now find themselves all but unemployable.
Also, employers understand the brain damage that comes from such majors, turning people — particularly young white people — into haters. They can’t create, they’re not entrepreneurial, they don’t care about the Constitution or the rule of law. They just want your money.
Now as I’ve been thinking about this, it’s easy to attribute it to naive young idealism, and surely there is some of that.
And it’s also surely fair to say that older people who have more assets to protect may become more conservative in order to do that.
But I think there may be something else going on, and at the moment this is just a thought percolating in my head and I’d like to know your take in the comments:
Today’s young people, and especially young liberals, are significantly less likely to have children than young conservatives, and all of them are less likely than was the case a generation ago.
So here’s what I’m thinking: Some part of the opposition to socialism by people over the age of 35, let’s say, is due to thinking about the future that socialism will create (or, more precisely, destroy) for their children. (And for younger people, especially conservatives, they may think about their future children.) That’s how I think about government, for example. It’s why the debt/deficit are my single biggest political issue.
But if you’re young, in debt, angry, nearly unemployable, with little prospect of financial (or even social/marital) success, AND unlikely to have children, you would live in a world of the deepest, bitterest envy and you might, especially if you don’t have much interest in ethics or freedom, support politicians who say they’ll steal other people’s earnings or wealth and give them to you in the form of “universal” whatever.
Socialists like to talk about capitalists as selfish. But capitalists understand that they (usually) don’t profit without a voluntary transaction; it’s profoundly unselfish in that to succeed as a capitalist you must appeal to the needs, wants, and desires of others.
The angry young people supporting monsters like Melat Kiros, Zohran Mamdani, and the recent crop of primary winners in New York want to destroy everything because they care for nobody but themselves…and they don’t even do that very well.
Anyway, this is just rattling around in my head. Would love to know what you think.
Good points and I think your comments apply broadly, but I believe there's a larger dynamic at work.
I just returned from a five-day visit with our daughter and her husband for her baby shower and to prepare the nursery for our first grandchild. It was a wonderful trip, made even better by time with our son and his girlfriend and other family members. Under one roof were five people ranging from 24 to 35, and three of us over 60, spanning a wide range of political and socioeconomic views.
Every one of the younger family members supported the economic policies advocated by Democratic Socialists. Inflation has eroded their earning power and the value of what little they've saved, they have no pensions, and have little hope things will improve anytime soon - for them or for their future children. They didn't see the social contract between employer and worker evaporate like I did, for them it simply doesn't exist.
This is coming from a group that is hardworking, employed, and in some cases working while attending college. They should be the ones climbing the socioeconomic ladder. Instead, in their eyes, neither Republicans nor traditional Democrats offer anything but more of the same. Trump's policies haven't made life more affordable for them, and they're wary of being drawn into another "forever war" in the Middle East. Government economic statistics carry no weight with them—the numbers don't match their lived experience.
What surprised me most: they don't seem particularly concerned about losing individual liberties under a socialist government, because they already feel they're living in a surveillance state. Flock cameras track their movements without a warrant; their phones and televisions monitor them constantly. Pointing out that they don't have to accept a given Terms of Service rings hollow when a smartphone is essentially required to function in today's banking, communication, and travel systems. They shrug off the idea that government might actually ban books, jail people for controversial art, or crack down on the "wrong" house of worship.
These aren't lazy, failure-to-launch young adults who resent the wealthy. They just want a functioning economy where they can build real careers. But like the airmen in Catch-22 - Joseph Heller's satire of a WWII bomber squadron whose commanding officer keeps raising the number of missions required before they can go home, making it impossible to ever complete their tour - these young adults feel the deck is stacked against them. Home prices, car prices, education, healthcare - all keep climbing further out of reach. And this is coming from people who are industrious and entrepreneurial. Their parents live in million-dollar tract homes they'll likely never be able to afford themselves. The operative emotion is frustration.
Their common plea: "We just need to try something different, anything." When I point out that socialism has never worked anywhere it's been tried, their frustration blinds them to that history. All they know is that it hasn't been tried here yet.
The average American today can't get ahead because inflation and taxes have sapped their earning power and increased asset prices beyond their reach. And that's exactly why fringe, antisemitic communist voices are gaining influence in America.
I'm the guy this argument is written for. Over 50, white, engineering degree, good job I've held for years, property taxes paid, did every single thing society and my parents told me to do. Built a nice life doing it. So I'm sympathetic to the sentiment, and I read the writers who make it regularly.
But the case against young liberals today is word for word what my parents' generation made about us. Young people are idealistic, broke, and prone to the excesses of the left. That was true of me at 25 and probably true of half the people saying it now. It's not new and it's not the story.
Here's the harder part. The conditions these kids are rejecting are not the conditions we grew up in. My tuition at a top ranked state school was $1,500 a semester and I walked out with an engineering degree. Homes didn't start at half a million. I went to the World Series for under a hundred bucks a ticket, more than once. The exact economics that priced this generation out of school, a house, and even a ballgame are the same economics that set my generation up to sit on the pile we accrued and cluck about how liberal the young have gotten.
That's what feels disingenuous. If I were 25 with six figures of debt for a degree that won't land me a job, no shot at a house, and priced out of the cheap seats too, I'd look hard at my parents' generation before taking a lecture from it.
One honest concession that cuts against the kids. These policies do work in a handful of northern EU countries, and the happiness and security data broadly backs that up. But those aren't us. Different culture, different work ethic, different track record, and they're fine with that tradeoff where we wouldn't be. So the answer isn't importing their model. It's being honest that the anger is earned before anyone lectures a 25 year old about socialism.