If We Don’t Teach Liberty to the Next Generation, We’ll Lose It

As America begins its next 250 years, conservatives face a challenge that cannot be solved by winning the upcoming election cycle alone.

We must win the next generation.

For decades, conservatives have rightly fought to reduce taxes, restrain government, protect constitutional liberties, and defend free markets. Those battles remain essential. But they will ultimately prove unsustainable if young Americans no longer understand why these principles matter in the first place.

Principles do not sustain themselves. Every generation must be taught the moral, economic, and civic foundations of freedom. If that education fails, liberty itself eventually fades away.

The warning signs are already impossible to ignore.

A new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll published July 8 found that confidence in both capitalism and democracy has eroded dramatically. Fewer than half of Americans now believe capitalism is working well, down from 60% a decade ago. More than half say democracy is functioning poorly or not at all, and just 35% said that patriotism is very important to them personally, down from more than 60% in 2019.

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Equally troubling are the findings from a recent Cato Institute survey, which revealed that an astonishing 46% of Americans do not know what the nation’s 250th birthday commemorates.

Among Generation Z, 61% could not identify the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as the event being celebrated. Majorities could not explain the purpose of the Constitution, why the colonies declared independence, or even which branch of government has the final say on constitutional disputes.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, the survey found that Gen Z views socialism more favorably than capitalism by a margin of 53% to 45%, while more than one-third express a favorable opinion of communism.

As troubling as these figures are, the truth is that none of this should surprise us.

For years, America’s educational establishment has devoted far more energy to teaching students what is supposedly wrong with their country than what made it exceptional.

Many young Americans can recite a lengthy catalogue of what they view as the country’s historical injustices. Far fewer can explain why millions risked everything to come here, how free enterprise lifted hundreds of millions around the globe out of poverty, or why constitutional checks and balances have preserved liberty longer than almost any other system of government in history.

The result is a generation that often takes freedom for granted because it has never been taught how rare freedom actually is.

Capitalism is not perfect. No system created by human beings ever will be.

But compared with every serious alternative, free enterprise has produced unparalleled prosperity, innovation, and opportunity. It rewards creativity, encourages personal responsibility, and gives ordinary citizens the ability to improve their lives through talent and hard work.

Yet free enterprise is only one pillar of the American experiment. The other is our democracy, which has protected individual liberty and restrained the power of government for two and a half centuries.

It depends upon civic virtue, respect for the rule of law, independent institutions, and citizens willing to place the common good above immediate self-interest. Without those habits, democratic institutions become little more than empty shells.

The Founding Fathers understood this well. In an Oct. 11, 1798, letter to the Massachusetts Militia, John Adams famously observed that the Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people” and was “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

That insight remains just as relevant today.

Citizens who do not understand their rights will struggle to defend them. Those who do not appreciate economic liberty will become increasingly willing to surrender it. And those who lose confidence in the American experiment will be more easily drawn to promises that government can solve every problem by assuming ever more control.

But complaining about these trends is not enough.

Conservatives need to invest far more heavily in civic education, youth leadership programs, entrepreneurship initiatives, constitutional literacy, and the teaching of American history in a way that acknowledges the nation’s mistakes without diminishing its greatness.

Students need to understand not only socialism’s repeated failures, but why it has failed wherever it has been tried. They should understand how markets create wealth, why limited government protects liberty, and why personal responsibility remains indispensable to a free society.

Parents, religious institutions, civic organizations, businesses, and philanthropists all have important roles to play. The task cannot be left solely to public schools, many of which have demonstrated little interest in presenting America’s founding ideals in a positive light.

The good news is that the public is ready. The Cato survey found that Americans overwhelmingly want children to learn that freedom is rare and must be protected, that patriotism means loyalty to America’s principles rather than to any political party, and that the nation’s history includes serious failings as well as extraordinary accomplishments.

America’s 250th anniversary year, therefore, should not simply be an occasion for fireworks and parades.

It should be the beginning of a renewed national effort to ensure that the next generation understands why this republic was created, how it has endured, and what each citizen must do to maintain it.

For a generation that does not understand liberty cannot be expected to preserve it.

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