[external_article]
[source]: Crisis Magazine
[url]: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/young-americans-are-turning-to-socialism-they-deserve-better
Something remarkable is happening across America's cities. Young adults—often bright, compassionate, and idealistic—are voting for leaders who openly identify as socialists or even Marxists. Places like New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Seattle, once known for their entrepreneurial energy, have embraced movements that have failed everywhere they have been tried.
It is easy, from a distance, to dismiss these young people as misguided or naive. But that would be a profound mistake. They are responding to something real—something older generations do not always see.
This generation has grown up in a cultural landscape defined by instability. Many never knew a home where mother and father remained united. Many were raised in schools that told them what to think instead of how to think. Most have lived through an economy that treated them not as persons created in the image of God but as data points, market segments, or labor units. And almost all have inherited a culture that has lost its memory of God.
When the natural anchors of identity—faith, family, tradition, and community—disappear, young people go searching for something that feels solid. They want to belong. They want meaning. They want justice. They want a vision of life bigger than consumption, entertainment, and careerism. And in that search, socialism steps forward as the only ideology that even pretends to care about their hunger for connection and purpose.
This is why the State begins to take on a parental shape in their imagination. Socialism makes its entrance not as an economic theory but as a substitute family—a secular orphanage for a generation left unrooted.
Young adults today have lived through experiences that shattered their trust in economic and cultural elites. During Covid, they watched small businesses shuttered while massive corporations grew richer. They saw schools closed, churches locked, and public health become a theater of manipulation. To them, capitalism—at least in the form they've experienced—has not felt like freedom. It has felt like abandonment.
And so they stand before two apparent doors: Door One, where the State owns them; and Door Two, where the Market uses them. These are both distortions, both deformations of the human good. But to a generation raised without moral formation, without deep community, without the transcendent horizon of faith, the "compassionate" promise of socialism feels like the only option that speaks to their wounds.
Yet history offers a sobering truth: socialism has never delivered on its promises. It has produced oppression, poverty, and a mechanized view of the human person everywhere it has taken root. The tragedy is not that young people are drawn to it. The tragedy is that they were never shown the alternative.
Long before our current political moment, the Church offered a vision radically different from both collectivism and unfettered individualism. This Christian humanism is a profound understanding of the human person as created by God, ordered toward truth, fulfilled in communion, and destined for eternal life.
In Centesimus Annus, John Paul II affirmed that "the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs"—but only when it operates within "a strong juridical framework" that places it at the service of human freedom. He saw capitalism as capable of serving the good when guided by Christian ethics, the rule of law, and an active civil society—but dangerous when reduced to pure profit-seeking or idolatry of the market.
This Christian humanism is the true Third Way: a path that refuses the suffocating collectivism of socialism and the soul-draining individualism of godless capitalism. It begins by renewing the human heart, restoring marriage and family, rebuilding community, dignifying work, and reorienting society toward the sovereignty of God.
Those who reject God have understood something Christians have forgotten: whoever shapes the minds of the young shapes the future of a nation. Behind their political choices lies a spiritual cry.
This is why the renewal of culture cannot begin in the statehouse or the marketplace. It must begin in the human heart. Real change begins with prayer, with families healed and strengthened, with parishes that actually form disciples, with friendships rooted in virtue, with the sacraments embraced as sources of life rather than cultural ornaments.
This is why our initiatives at the John Paul II Renewal Center—like the Claymore Battle Plan and LoveEd, our formation programs—matter so profoundly. They provide practices that rebuild the heart: daily prayer, sacramental life, community, mission. They anchor children and young adults in the truth about their identity and their vocation. They give them what socialism cannot give and capitalism cannot teach: a reason to hope.
The truth is this: young Americans are not turning to socialism because they are foolish. They are turning to it because they were never shown the narrow gate—never shown a vision of life rooted in Christ, animated by love, ordered toward truth, and sustained by community.
But they deserve better. They deserve the truth about who they are. They deserve the Gospel.
The future will not belong to the powerful institutions of our age—neither the State nor the Market. The future will belong to those who rediscover the narrow gate, who allow Christ to rebuild their hearts, and who, in turn, rebuild the world. Young adults are searching for a home. The Christian humanism of the Church is that home. It is time we offered it to them with clarity, courage, and love.