When a young man who you know and work with praises China, socialism, and Mamdani while claiming to defend women’s rights, the contradictions expose a deeper problem: a generation raised on slogans instead of history, economics, and consistency.
It started innocently enough. A casual after-work, workplace chat with an articulate young man and a friend in his early twenties. Then it turned to politics, and I found myself staring into a worldview that left me unsettled. I disagreed with him on essentially every major point he raised. What disturbed me most was how completely history, basic economics, and simple consistency had been set aside, ignored, and not researched.
He brought up the SAVE America Act. His main reservation, he said, was that it would strip married women of the right to vote. If a woman took her husband’s last name, her birth certificate would no longer match her current ID, and she would be unable to register or cast a ballot. He framed this as a direct attack on women’s rights.
This is not accurate. The legislation requires documentary proof of citizenship to register for federal elections and photo identification to vote. It also explicitly directs states to create processes for name discrepancies—exactly the situation created by marriage. Women (and anyone else who has changed a name) can provide a marriage certificate, court order, or simply an affidavit. Updating a driver’s license or other ID after marriage is already a routine life step most people complete for banking, employment, and travel. The claim that tens of millions of married women would suddenly lose the franchise is a narrative that has been amplified online by opponents of the bill. It is not what the text of the legislation does.
I tried to explain this. He was unmoved. Women’s rights, he insisted, were under threat.
At that point I interrupted. If you care about women’s rights in this country, I told him, then stop allowing men who think they are women into our sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, and prisons. He had nothing to say in reply. The silence was telling.
Then the conversation shifted to China. He called it a great country, well-run, with a strong economic structure. He claimed it had surpassed the United States and become the wealthiest nation in the world. The people there, he said, are happy. Communism, in his view, was “okay.”
I was baffled. On a purchasing-power-parity basis, China’s overall economy is larger, but on the more commonly cited nominal GDP measure, the United States remains ahead. More importantly, on a per-person basis the gap is enormous: American GDP per capita is several times higher. Happiness rankings place China well down the list, not near the top. And the human reality under the Chinese Communist Party is not the picture of a free or contented society. Mass surveillance is pervasive. Uyghurs and other minorities face systematic repression, including forced labor and coercive population controls that have particularly affected women. Tiananmen remains erased from official history. There is no free speech or independent judiciary.
Religious freedom is heavily restricted. China officially recognizes only five religions, including Protestant Christianity and Catholicism, but solely through state-controlled organizations that must submit to Communist Party oversight and “Sinicization”—the requirement that doctrine and practice align with Party ideology and loyalty to the regime. Independent “house churches” and underground congregations are treated as illegal. Authorities conduct raids, arrest pastors and members, demolish crosses and church buildings, restrict access to Bibles and online religious content, and punish “illegal religious activities.” Recent years have seen intensified crackdowns on major unregistered Protestant networks and pressure on underground Catholics. Free, independent practice of Christianity is not permitted.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s zero-COVID policy produced some of the world’s strictest lockdowns. Entire cities and apartment buildings were sealed for weeks or months. In numerous documented cases, residents were physically locked or even welded into their homes, unable to leave for food, medicine, or medical emergencies. Reports emerged of people dying from lack of access to care, of shortages inside sealed buildings, and of widespread hardship. The policy was only abandoned in late 2022 after rare public protests.
China’s post-1978 growth came after it abandoned pure Maoist economics and introduced market mechanisms, private enterprise, and foreign investment while retaining one-party political control. Pure command-and-control communism produced famine and stagnation; the later hybrid model produced growth alongside continuing authoritarianism.
He then praised New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He admired the pothole repairs, the snow-clearing efforts, and especially the tax on high-value second homes owned by non-primary residents. He spoke favorably of the mayor’s policies and, in an offhand way, of socialism itself.
I do not object to competent municipal services. Filling potholes and clearing snow are basic responsibilities of government, not proof of a superior economic system. The second-home surcharge is a targeted revenue measure that has been debated for years. What disturbed me was the easy equation of these practical steps with a broader endorsement of socialist ideas, offered without any apparent curiosity about the long historical record of heavy state ownership, price controls, and central planning—shortages, misallocation, lower living standards, and the concentration of power that so often follows.
The housing reality under Mamdani already illustrates the problem. In July 2026, Manhattan’s average rent hit a record $6,655 a month—up roughly 10 percent from a year earlier. Industry observers point to a series of city and state policies, including “good cause” eviction rules, the FARE Act (which largely banned tenant-paid broker fees), and the 2019 rent laws, as major contributors. These measures have constrained the supply of rental housing, allowing demand to drive prices higher. As one economist put it, landlords are not running a charity; costs get passed on.
Meanwhile, Mamdani campaigned on a rent freeze for the city’s roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments. The Rent Guidelines Board approved it 7-1; the freeze takes effect for qualifying leases beginning October 1. Supporters celebrate the relief for existing tenants. Critics, including the sole dissenting board member, warn that freezing rents while operating expenses remain uncapped threatens the long-term viability of those buildings, discourages investment and maintenance, and can trap residents in deteriorating units with fewer alternatives. The freeze covers only the stabilized sector. Market-rate tenants continue to face record prices. This is the classic pattern of rent control: short-term political wins for some, reduced supply and higher costs for others, and gradual decay of the housing stock.
At a certain point I simply ran out of words, I was getting frustrated and also needed to get home. The contradictions piled up too quickly. In one breath he claimed to care deeply about women’s voting rights and the threat posed by a citizenship-and-ID requirement that includes explicit accommodations for name changes. In the next he had no answer when confronted with the reality of males in female sports, private spaces, and prisons—areas where women’s safety, fairness, and privacy are directly at stake. He then praised a country whose government has imposed severe restrictions on women’s bodily autonomy, religious practice (including independent Christianity), and freedom of expression—and that locked its own people into their homes during COVID—and he expressed openness to an ideology whose 20th-century applications repeatedly produced repression rather than liberation. The selective concern was striking. It is a pattern I have noticed before: intense focus on a contested American policy framed as existential for women, paired with silence or indifference when the threat to women—or to basic liberties—comes from progressive gender ideology or from authoritarian regimes.
This conversation is not an isolated oddity. Polling shows large shares of young Americans now view socialism favorably, and a smaller but still significant share view communism the same way. Democratic Socialists of America membership has grown dramatically. Charismatic, media-fluent candidates who speak the language of affordability, community, and generational grievance are winning primaries and local offices. Economic pressures are real: housing, healthcare, and education costs have outpaced wages for many younger people. Soft-socialist policies that subsidize demand while restricting supply have contributed to those pressures. COVID-era spending and monetary expansion further eroded purchasing power. Young people feel the squeeze, and socialist messaging offers a clear villain (the rich, landlords, “the system”) and a promise of relief.
Part of the problem is where many young people get their political and economic ideas. Comedians and podcasters with massive audiences often speak with absolute confidence on subjects they have not seriously studied. On a recent episode of his podcast, Joe Rogan and Shane Gillis trashed communism as “the gayest sh*t ever,” only to turn around and insist that free healthcare is “cool” and somehow not communism. Rogan added that billionaire wealth is “the problem with capitalism” and that the country should be treated “like it’s a community” so the sick do not go without care. Gillis agreed that free healthcare “would be a good move” and that calling it communism is the real issue.
This is exactly the shallow, slogan-level thinking that leaves people vulnerable. Free or heavily socialized healthcare systems already exist across the developed world, and the results are mixed at best. In Canada the median wait from referral by a family doctor to actual treatment was 28.6 weeks in 2025—one of the longest on record—and millions of adults lack a regular family doctor. England’s National Health Service has a backlog of roughly 7.1 million cases and has not met its 18-week treatment standard since 2016. Pretending that “free healthcare” can be separated from the incentives, costs, rationing, and trade-offs that come with it is not analysis; it is wishful thinking. Rogan is an entertainer. He is not an economist, a healthcare policy expert, or a historian of socialism. Treating his off-the-cuff takes as serious political guidance is a mistake. The same goes for other celebrities who wander into policy debates with confidence and little depth.
The danger compounds when political leaders decide that the path to victory runs through chasing these same audiences. It is a losing and dangerous gamble to forgo truth in favor of popularity. Successful leaders lead; coalitions form around them. Politicians who pander and chase the crowd—mirroring whatever black-pilling, conspiratorial, or contradictory musings are currently popular on the biggest podcasts—end up with fickle support and diluted principles. Entertainers contain multitudes and change their minds; their audiences are not a stable base. More importantly, it is simply wrong for leaders to treat popularity as the highest good. The voice of the people is not the voice of God. Crowds are often wrong, which is why we have a Constitution, checks and balances, and rights that are supposed to be off-limits to majority whim. Reality eventually asserts itself. Leaders who run from it in pursuit of the latest podcast consensus only accelerate the country’s problems.
Yet the diagnosis is incomplete and the prescription historically illiterate. Capitalism is imperfect. Cronyism, regulatory capture, and asset inflation are real problems. But market systems with secure property rights and price signals have produced the highest broad-based living standards in human history. The alternative—heavy state direction of production and distribution—has a consistent record of failure when tried at scale. Young people are not stupid; many are simply uninformed about that record and have been offered a romanticized version of socialism that emphasizes community and healthcare while soft-pedaling incentives, trade-offs, and outcomes.
A recent Heritage Explains episode featuring Mike Gonzalez examines exactly how this happened. Schools, universities, museums, and other cultural institutions have spent decades reshaping how Americans view socialism, capitalism, and the country itself. When the hard lessons of history stop being passed down, a vacuum forms—and something else fills it. The result appears in the politics of American cities.
Lily Tang Williams offers a living corrective. She grew up in Chengdu during Mao’s Cultural Revolution: food rationing coupons, eight families sharing one outdoor bathroom and water faucet, unheated housing that produced frostbite, daily school indoctrination that treated Mao as near-god, the division of people into “red” and “black” classes, and the total control of information and culture. She fled China, became an American citizen, and now speaks out so that young people hear the truth she was denied. She is currently the Republican candidate for Congress in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District—her third campaign for the seat. Her story is the opposite of the romanticized version of communism that too many young Americans absorb.
They have also been sold a false version of the American Dream itself. Too many now treat it as a guaranteed outcome—a house, a white picket fence, 2.2 children, and instant middle-class comfort—and then declare the Dream dead when that outcome does not arrive on schedule or without struggle. That was never the Dream.
The American Dream is a process, not an outcome. It is the relationship between cause and effect: make good, virtuous, smart decisions; perform dutiful work; use your talents; and over time you will likely end up better off than your parents. Pass those habits and values to your children, and they can do the same. It is intergenerational. It does not promise that every individual will leap from poorest to richest in one lifetime. It promises that your abilities and choices will be allowed to take you as far as they can.
For that process to work, certain preconditions must be protected: free markets and private property so that you own your labor and the fruits of your innovation; equal justice under law that applies the same rules to everyone; freedom of speech, mind, and religion so ideas can be tested; and a social fabric that still recognizes and rewards virtue. When those conditions exist, the process produces unprecedented prosperity because free people aggregate knowledge, innovate, compete, and make their own trade-offs about what they value.
That process still works. It is rarer in human history than most people realize. For most of history, the majority were simply told what to do. The American system is different precisely because it protects the individual’s shot. People who claim the process is broken often want to replace it with a special cadre of planners who will direct the economy toward their preferred ends and circumscribe individual choices in the name of some collective good. Those ideas have been tried repeatedly. They fail.
So how do we reach young people who have absorbed the opposite message?
First, start with sympathy rather than contempt. Dismissing their economic anxiety as entitlement only confirms the narrative that older generations do not understand or care. Acknowledge that housing is genuinely expensive in many cities, that student debt is a burden, and that the post-2008 and post-COVID economy has felt stacked against newcomers.
Second, teach basic economics and history without condescension. Show the difference between nominal and per-capita GDP. Explain why prices rise when demand is subsidized and supply is constrained. Walk through the actual results of rent control, nationalization, and central planning in multiple countries. Contrast China’s growth after market reforms with the human cost of its political system, including the severe restrictions on independent religious practice such as Christianity and the extreme COVID lockdowns that sealed people inside their homes. Point out that updating an ID after marriage is ordinary adult life, not disenfranchisement. Use concrete data rather than slogans—including the current Manhattan rent data and the predictable effects of freezing one large segment of the housing market while costs keep rising. And remind them that entertainers, however popular, are not reliable sources for policy analysis.
Voices like Lily Tang Williams—survivors who lived under the system and now run for office in places like New Hampshire’s 2nd District—should be heard far more widely.
Third, recover and teach the real American Dream as a process that still functions when its preconditions are protected. Free markets, private property, equal justice, free minds, and social virtue are not optional extras. They are the conditions that make upward mobility possible across generations. The alternative—elite direction of the economy and the curtailment of individual choice—has a long record of failure.
Fourth, improve the cultural and rhetorical presentation. Charisma, humor, and aesthetic competence matter. Candidates and messengers who look and sound like they live in the same cultural world as young people will be heard more readily than those who do not. Community and belonging are powerful human needs; free societies can and should offer genuine forms of both without requiring the abandonment of markets or constitutional limits.
Fifth, model consistency and demand it from leaders. If women’s rights matter, they matter in sports, locker rooms, bathrooms, and prisons. They matter under theocracies. And they matter in Xinjiang — the region in northwest China where the Chinese government has detained over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in camps, imposed forced labor, and carried out coercive population-control measures, including forced sterilizations and abortions that have specifically targeted Uyghur women.
They matter in American election law as well. If competence in government is admirable, it should be judged by results over time, not by a single viral pothole blitz or a politically popular rent freeze that leaves market-rate tenants paying record prices and risks the long-term health of the stabilized stock. Selective outrage is easy to spot and easy to dismiss. And political leaders must lead with truth rather than chase the latest podcast consensus. Popularity is not the same as principle. Reality eventually wins; the only question is how much damage is done before it does.
I left that conversation disturbed and, for a moment, speechless. The young man was not malicious. He was confident, socially fluent, and operating from a set of assumptions that felt self-evidently true to him. That is precisely why the moment was frightening. Ideas that have repeatedly failed, and that have been accompanied by repression when fully implemented, are being repackaged as moral common sense for a new generation—often amplified by celebrities who treat complex policy questions as late-night banter, and sometimes echoed by politicians who prefer popularity to truth.
Turning the tables will require better facts, clearer history, genuine sympathy for the economic pressures young people face, a recovery of the actual American Dream as process rather than guaranteed outcome, leaders who lead instead of chase, and the willingness to speak plainly about trade-offs and outcomes. The alternative is to keep losing the argument by default.
