Gen Z Must Not Take Liberty for Granted

On the last day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government was created—a republic or a monarchy. He replied, “A republic,” but only “if you can keep it.” 

The founding fathers enshrined the natural law and natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence into a timeless national charter upholding freedom, which today remains the world’s longest-standing written constitution—surviving a civil war, two world wars, an economic depression, and various turbulent eras of populism and civil unrest. The United States may never have fully embodied the cherished ideals of its founding throughout its 250-year history, but to the posthumous satisfaction of Franklin and his contemporaries, We the People have kept our republic. Generations of Americans have inherited the blessings of liberty from our forebears and faithfully improved upon their civic enterprise.  

However, Gen Z, coming of age in a divided America struggling with the rising cost of living, a hollowed-out civil society, and record-low institutional trust, is eager for systemic change. From the Mamdani Left to the Groyper Right, a growing number of young Americans have an appetite for collectivism and would dispense with foundational American principles such as the rule of law and economic freedom to advance their ideological vision. But as the United States contemplates its next quarter millennium, Gen Z must not take for granted the self-evident truths of our nation’s founding, lest we forfeit the rights, liberties, and opportunities we enjoy and exercise daily.   

Every generation of Americans has faced its own unique trials and tribulations. In the past century, the Lost Generation experienced disillusionment, trauma, and aimlessness after the tragedy of World War I; the Greatest Generation endured the Great Depression and fought (and won) the most deadly conflict in world history; the Baby Boomers navigated Cold War anxieties and civil unrest, especially surrounding the Vietnam War; Gen X, or the “latchkey generation,” grew up amid high divorce rates and a surge of broken homes; and Millennials entered a volatile labor market as the global economy plunged into a recession.  

Gen Z has notoriously dealt with mental health issues and social isolation, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. Financial pressures have only compounded these problems. But unlike previous generations, the “Zoomers” aren’t as committed to fulfilling the preamble of the Constitution by working toward a more perfect union. Some would even scrap this venerable document for an arbitrary and despotic political order unrestrained by checks and balances and the separation of powers.  

Opinion polls showcase this alarming trend. Forty percent of Gen Z Americans say they would favor “rule by a strong leader” that “can make decisions without interference from the legislature or from the courts.” Only 27 percent oppose it. One-quarter agree with the statement, “I don’t really care about the Constitution.” That contrasts with just 4 percent of Baby Boomers and 14 percent of the U.S. total.  

Many young Americans aren’t interested in the republican virtues of compromise or civil discourse either. Around one in seven 18- to 29-year-olds describe themselves as “extremely ideological,” far surpassing older age cohorts, and 39 percent believe political violence is sometimes acceptable. About two-thirds of college students think it’s at least sometimes okay to shout down a speaker on campus.  

Gen Z’s radicalism and polarization were revealed through two major political developments in 2025: the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City and the rise of the Groypers, led by far-right livestreamer Nicholas J. Fuentes. Both movements reject core elements of the American political project—rugged individualism, constitutionalism, and free-market capitalism—in pursuit of a top-down collectivist framework.  

In the Big Apple, young professionals represented Mamdani’s base, with 78 percent of voters under 30 casting their ballot for the self-described “democratic socialist.” Since nearly two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds have a favorable view of socialism and one-third support communism, this electoral outcome wasn’t a surprise. The eldest Zoomers were born six years after the Soviet Union dissolved and the ostensible “end of history” had arrived. The Red Scare and the prospect of the hammer and sickle conquering Western capitals never entered the zeitgeist of a generation whose childhood toys said: “Made in China.” By the time they enrolled in college, America’s institutions of higher learning had become occupied by “woke” acolytes of the New Left, who presented socialist and Marxist ideas as something fresh and avant-garde.

Mamdani, though a millennial, is a poster child for the New Left radicalism that has captivated much of Gen Z, especially women. At the elite, private liberal arts college Bowdoin, he co-founded a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter and earned a degree in Africana Studies. Later, he served in the New York State Assembly and, as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), didn’t hold back from revealing “the end goal of seizing the means of production.”  

A well-worn and thoroughly discredited Marxist slogan, adapted straight from The Communist Manifesto, “seizing the means of production” invokes a grim historical legacy of violent repression and mass murder: the Bolsheviks’ “dekulakization,” the Chinese Communist Party's “Great Leap Forward,” and the Khmer Rouge’s “Year Zero.” Even if, in a pipedream scenario, all industry and agriculture were democratically collectivized (as Mamdani may envision), a socialist state would still require undue coercion. As Friedrich Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom, “The clash between planning and democracy arises simply from the fact that the latter is an obstacle to the suppression of freedom which the direction of economic activity requires.” A purely democratic proletarian dictatorship would “probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done.” 

Mamdani has disavowed political violence, but his DSA comrades are building an increasingly militant network through their “Red Rabbits Security Commission,” which, according to its own authorizing resolution, is preparing for a “national uprising against federal agents and police brutality.” The DSA also seeks to upend the Constitution by abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College and “replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”  

Indeed, such an ambitious platform appeals to Gen Z, many of whom, as we’ve seen, hold no reverence for the Constitution or respect for their opponents’ right to disagree. The DSA’s membership nearly doubled during Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, and the organization’s age structure is shifting rapidly younger. In 2013, the DSA was dominated by Boomer leftists of the 1960s counter-culture, with an average age of 67. After Donald Trump’s 2016 election, that number declined to 33. Over half (52 percent) of the DSA’s governing board, the National Political Committee (NPC), openly identify as communists.  

In his novel The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky described Russian revolutionary zeal as a “fire in the minds of men.” Regrettably, the communist inferno of the last century, which at its zenith tormented 1.5 billion people (and killed over 100 million total), wasn’t fully extinguished when the Berlin Wall fell. Alas, a new generation of impassioned left-wing activists is eager to embrace “the warmth of collectivism.” 

Yet the impulse to burn things down and scoff at the legacy of the tried and true isn’t confined to the young Left. More than a decade of progressive onslaught from universities, pop culture, the media, and the Fortune 500 has fueled a growing right-wing backlash, notably among Gen Z men. Last year, older movement conservatives were abruptly caught off guard when it was revealed that a significant proportion of young conservatives, mostly male, held reactionary and racist beliefs. After Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ controversial remarks defending Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nicholas J. Fuentes, Rod Dreher reported that “between 30 and 40 percent” of conservative Zoomers working in Washington are Groypers, based on estimates from sources Dreher regarded as credible.  

Fuentes and his ilk are a stark aberration from the conservatism of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk, which historically defined Anglo-American conservative thought. They wish to supplant the Right’s principled defense of ordered liberty, limited government, and free markets with a tribal, chauvinistic nationalism that treats white identity as paramount. According to the Groypers, President Trump’s MAGA populism has been far too modest and yielded disappointing results. Their hope is for a right-wing “Caesar-like figure” to rule America with an iron fist and impose its will on the population through martial law and the curtailment of voting rights. “The Constitution,” Fuentes once quipped, “is gay.”  

Groypers’ economics shares many similarities with the populist Left, including protectionism, industrial policy, and a generous social safety net that provides health care and education subsidies. Fuentes argues that the American Right must surrender its commitment to free markets. On foreign policy, Groypers are even more concerning, actively rooting for U.S. adversaries like Russia, China, Iran, and the Taliban despite their own pledged “America First” agenda. In a theoretical future war against China, Fuentes said he would fight on China’s side. “For me to succeed, the [U.S.] regime necessarily has to fall,” he said, “and the ascendancy of China and Russia hastens that end.” 

Groyper sympathy for America’s enemies extends far into the past, too. In these chronically online corners of the dissident Right, World War II revisionism is widespread, and amateur historians, white nationalists, and conspiracy theorists repeat the phrase, “We defeated the wrong enemy,” which they attribute to Gen. George S. Patton. Fuentes openly admires Adolf Hitler and said he “doesn’t share this histrionic, Jewish view that Hitler is this exceptionally bogeyman, evil figure.”  

Outright Nazi apologism and Holocaust denial on the Gen Z Right have intensified in recent years with viral videos and recordings of Hitler’s speeches, translated into English via AI. Often taken out of context and set to emotionally enticing music, such content glorifies Hitler as a heroic yet tragically misunderstood defender of European culture and the Christian faith. That Hitler was a genocidal social Darwinist and eugenicist guided by the materialistic premise that existence is a zero-sum struggle for resources and survival, where might makes right and the strong vanquish the weak, is not presented as a historical caveat to the impressionable Zoomer audience.  

Tucker Carlson has amplified and legitimized these revisionist views by hosting guests like Darryl Cooper, who described Winston Churchill as “the chief villain of the Second World War,” or Cornell University chemistry professor David Collum, who suggested that the United States should’ve allied with Hitler in World War II. Unfortunately, sensational podcast content spliced into reels, lacking in substance and sources, appears more influential than the scholarship of reputable historians. A 2025 Manhattan Institute poll found that over half (54 percent) of GOP voters under age 50 now “believe the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe.” 

Gen Z’s polarization and retreat into hyper-partisan echo chambers, where authoritarian and anti-liberal ideas prevail, risks a revival of the ideological clashes of the twentieth century, with socialists and Marxists on one side and, on the other, ultra-nationalists and fascists. The ascendancy of either movement would squander America and the West’s rich but fragile inheritance for the short-sighted politics of grievance. It’s time for Gen Z to take things more seriously, develop original ideas, and learn to appreciate and safeguard the values, institutions, and procedures that have stood the test of time.  

America is the crown jewel of Western civilization and the culmination of more than two millennia of philosophy, religion, and culture. As Samuel Gregg has written, the American founding “amounts to a mixture of the thought of Greece and Rome, the religions of Judaism and Christianity, the heritage of England and its institutional expressions of liberty, and the various Enlightenment movements that assumed prominence in the eighteenth century.”  

Despite its historical and present-day flaws, America is the last best hope for freedom and the dignity of the individual. Gen Z should be grateful and patriotic that it will inherit this free, prosperous nation that remains the envy of the world. As Zoomers assume leadership positions in business and government, they will face unprecedented challenges such as aging and shrinking populations, which will strain economic systems built upon models of endless population growth, along with mounting geopolitical tensions and realignments that may jeopardize America and its allies’ wealth, security, and global prestige.  

Overcoming these obstacles and sustaining the American way of life will require Gen Z to abandon its ideological silos and reaffirm its robust allegiance to liberty, the rule of law, and human dignity. For 250 years, Americans have toiled and sacrificed to protect their God-given rights while striving to build a more perfect union. The torch will soon be passed to Gen Z, and we must not be the ones to spoil the great American tradition. As John Adams wrote less than a year after the colonies declared their independence, “Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.” 

Aidan Grogan is an Associate Editor at the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, a Senior Contributor with Young Voices, and a history PhD candidate at Liberty University. His work has been published in National Review, The Daily Wire, The Dispatch, and many other outlets.