Every year, the Buckley Institute associated with Yale University polls American undergraduates, and every year the results tell us the unfiltered truth about what mindset a left-wing college education produces. This year’s survey, released during the 250th anniversary of our founding, exposes some terrifying trends.
That college students are overwhelmingly liberal, easily angered, and antagonistic to reasoned debate is no surprise. But what if I told you that 22 percent of college students say America deserved 9/11?
Yes, you read that right. Not, “America made mistakes that contributed to global resentment.” Not, “9/11 happened within a larger context of U.S. involvement in the Middle East.” We deserved it.
If you’ve been paying attention to the midterm election battle, you likely know that Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has come under fire for his close relationship with far-left streamer Hasan Piker. One of Piker’s most infamous statements, which has shown up in numerous anti-El-Sayed campaign ads, is that same claim – that America deserved 9/11.
The conventional wisdom is that this hurts El-Sayed’s chances against Republican Mike Rogers. But the Buckley Institute poll suggests this appalling relationship might actually help El-Sayed with a sizable chunk of young voters. Courting the “pro-terrorist” crowd is now apparently a viable campaign strategy for Democrats.
Politics aside, it is truly sobering that just 25 years after the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor, nearly a quarter of 18- to 21-year-old students now say that we deserved psychotic terrorists murdering nearly 3,000 of our countrymen who were burned alive or crushed under 500,000 tons of steel.
Perhaps this rise in anti-Americanism is rooted in a growing acceptance of violence. Forty-five percent of respondents said that physical violence can be justified to stop what they consider “hate speech” — a new record. Forty percent think offensive speech should be a criminal offense. Nearly half would refuse to even sit in a classroom with a professor whose views differ from their own, and 48 percent say they couldn’t be close friends with someone from the other political party.
Add it all up, and it means that roughly half of students on college campuses are liable to become so enraged by certain contrary opinions that they want to use physical violence to silence disagreement. Can we really have free speech when barely half of people believe in it?
This puts another trend into much starker relief: the rise of socialism. Most American adults are baffled that so many young people find socialism preferable to capitalism. Don’t they know that socialism immiserates people and makes them poorer? Don’t they know that socialist societies always devolve into repressive police states? Don’t they know about the 100 million deaths under socialist regimes in the 20th century alone?
It is comforting to believe that maybe students just don’t know the truth. It’s much scarier if they know the truth and choose socialism anyway. After all, if nearly half of students support violent repression of opinions they disagree with, then it shouldn’t surprise us that 42 percent of undergraduates now say they’d rather live under socialism than capitalism, the widest gap favoring socialism in the five years Buckley has asked the question. Perhaps that 42 percent prefer socialism not because they are unaware it is tyrannical, but precisely because it is tyrannical.
Even more gut-wrenching, a plurality—47 percent—actually believe Cuba and the old Soviet Union offer a better economic model than the United States.
These young adults have been born into the most prosperous, technologically advanced civilization in human history. Every building they walk into has air conditioning, the idea of not owning a smartphone is unimaginable, and they can have any food delivered to their doorstep just by clicking a few buttons on a screen. Yet they look at the ash heap of the 20th century’s greatest failures—countries that couldn’t keep bread on the shelves (much less install central heating and air), countries that routinely murdered their citizens to keep the population in line—and say, “Yep, that’s a better place to be.” Even business majors favor socialism over capitalism.
It’s possible to pick through the data and find some silver linings. For example, 65 percent of students say they’re proud to be American. But even that number reveals some odd inconsistencies among respondents. Half of all undergraduates now say America is “inextricably linked to white supremacy,” meaning some who are proud to be American nonetheless think America is a white supremacist nation.
Unfortunately, this is not a spontaneous outbreak of bad ideas. It’s the predictable result of the radical left-wing takeover of the education system.
Our mission, then, is clear. Conservative alumni shouldn’t give a dime to schools radicalizing their students. Instead, we should support institutions like the Buckley Program that are doing the hard, unglamorous work of exposing the rot at legacy institutions.
When possible, we should fight to retake universities, whether it’s by overturning the administration, as Governor DeSantis did at New College in Florida, or by weeding out DEI and radicalism, as Texas is doing in its state school system. And we should support alternatives as well—not just new schools devoted to actual scholarship, but different avenues for success, including trade schools, apprenticeships, or even cheering young women who choose to be stay-at-home moms.
If we do our work well, hopefully the next generation won’t have such insane opinions.
As for those in school now? Well, let’s just hope that when reality hits, as it always does, they will wake up before it’s too late.
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