EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third essay of a RealClearPolicy series centered on the American Project, an initiative of the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. The project looks to the country’s founding principles to respond to our current cultural and political upheaval.
“The Millennial Socialists Are Coming” declared The New York Times’ Sunday Review. Just four days earlier, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old “democratic socialist,” had not only upset an entrenched incumbent in a New York congressional race, but cast herself as the face of a generation’s changing politics.
For years, pundits have forecast doom for conservatives standing in the way of the millennial generation’s relentless demographic march. Many on the Right have called for greeting youth with open arms, only to claim electoral victory in 2016 with a septuagenarian, whose effigy was burned on college campuses across the country. Here was the opportunity for progressives to claim their political spoils.
Or was it? Does the long arc of demographics bend toward liberalism? And, if so, how should conservatives respond?
As 2016 shows, nothing is inevitable in politics. Jettisoning beliefs unpopular among young voters simply to win them over would be to sell out the conservative soul. The Right should stick to its principles, for they speak to the longings for community and connection that young people crave in these disillusioned and disordered times.
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Michael Hendrix is the director of state & local policy at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in RealClearPolicy