A great disservice has been done to the young people of the United States. Those who are slowly emerging into adulthood, and are now looking around and taking stock of the nation that has been bequeathed to them by their elders are horrified at what has been allowed to happen. They see problems, but have rarely been offered guidance on the path toward solutions to the fiscal, regulatory, and military rot that has been allowed to fester by those of the older generation. Many young people, natural idealists who don’t know any better, turn to “socialism” as an answer to this country’s ills. These people, of the aging “millennial” generation of which I am a part, and even younger, are immediately scoffed at and written off by the older generations, who have never bothered to offer them an alternative, because they have none to offer.
It’s become a pastime to ridicule young “socialists” by the same people who allowed the political climate to decay to a point that the youth feel that they must take it upon themselves to fix it. Having not received any guidance or vision whatsoever by the chattering, chiding, finger-wagging blob of older generations, they take their idealism and turn their backs. Unsurprisingly.
And so, being idealists, they go to hear those who preach idealism while also presenting a plan of action. They genuinely want to change the world for the better, but as so few prophets of liberty are able to capture their imagination, they gravitate to those who do. Enter the socialists, who masterfully appeal to this wayward idealism of the young and gain their support.
Yes, socialism is a false prosperity doctrine, but these kids came of age during the end of the Bush Presidency, throughout the disillusioning Obama terms, and have been disgusted by the Trump Presidency.
We are failing to appeal to the one group that will see liberty to its fruition: the young idealists. Our philosophy of liberty is for them, and would speak to them if only more people had the courage to speak it. Instead, we allow free trade to be associated with Trumpism, or just another brand of authoritarianism. It is much more than that.
Trump seems to awake the middle-aged adolescent in his supporters. Even his detractors. The young of this country are sickened unto death by this behavior. They know they deserve better, than the human race is meant for more than an endless sequence of bickerings and petty squabbles that consume the time of so many people. The young socialists are so because they have been offered no alternative. But the philosophy of liberty thrives best within just such people, if only they are given the opportunity to hear it and allow it time to “click”.
The young adults of this country have been the driving force behind marijuana legalization, despite having been schoolmarmed about the dangers of marijuana throughout their childhood. They pursued this ideal anyway, and all the while were laughed at by the older generations who now frequent the many cannabis shops that have opened throughout the country. But what they may not understand is that marijuana legalization has been a victory for liberty, a removal of authoritarian prohibition over a harmless plant, prohibition that has caused endless suffering and death. Now all that suffering and death is ending, the cannabis market has erupted, and thousands are employed in actual jobs.
The heart and spirit of liberty is its idealism, even its utopianism. This is the philosophy that these young socialists are truly seeking, they just don’t know it yet. The removal of all barriers to voluntary action, the removal of force and violence from transactions, is the true idealism of liberty. Advocates of liberty must keep this in mind; their idealism is their strength. Ron Paul used idealism to great effect, it was the greatest awakening to the philosophy of liberty that will probably ever occur. But it was the idealism of Paul that fueled his success. There was none of the MAGA baggage to pollute the message, it was just liberty. Paul’s revolution lives on in the cannabis legalization movement, even the vaccine choice movement.
It is the act of fearlessly advocating for liberty in a pure and consistent manner which will win hearts and minds, something that apparently few people are capable of, but will naturally attract those predisposed to seeking it out. But lets not ridicule the young for desperately wanting to fix a country that has been allowed to reach such a state of rampant mismanagement, corruption, authoritarianism, and apathy.
