Shock poll: America’s youth want socialism on autopilot — literally

Growing up during the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, I remember when socialism was a universal punch line. It stood for failure, repression, and economic ruin.

Not any more. Today, socialism is the ideological spearpoint of the left. Many young Americans now insist that socialism is the cure for the affordability crisis squeezing them. They believe it with a fervor that would have stunned earlier generations.

The evidence is overwhelming, and the verdict is final: Socialism fails everywhere it is tried. Now imagine that system fused with an all-seeing AI.

New polling from Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute’s Emerging Issues Center shows that a majority of likely voters ages 18 to 39 want a Democratic Socialist to win the White House in 2028.

Nearly 60% of young Americans say they support more government housing, a nationwide rent freeze, and government-run grocery stores in every town.

These numbers aren’t anomalies. They reflect a deeper reality: Many young Americans know little about socialism’s actual history, consequences, or track record — and they have been conditioned to believe it can fix the challenges in front of them.

One reason for that ignorance is uncomfortable but obvious. It’s not only the schools — it’s the parents. According to the polls, parents were the most influential voices shaping their children’s support for Democratic Socialism. More than half of respondents said their parents held a favorable view of it.

That alone explains a great deal. And unsurprisingly, more than half also said teachers and professors viewed Democratic Socialism favorably. After decades of ideological drift, even parents who grew up after the USSR’s collapse now believe socialism “might work.”

Based on my own experience teaching in public schools, that rings true. Most of my colleagues openly sympathized with the socialist cause and were hostile to free-market capitalism.

This didn’t happen by accident. It reflects a long march beginning in the Progressive Era. My own postgraduate experience at a prestigious teaching college felt less like preparation for the classroom and more like a Cultural Revolution struggle session — conformity required, dissent punished.

As the public education system drifted leftward, it taught generation after generation that socialism is benevolent and capitalism is predatory. The result is predictable. Many young people now see the free market as the enemy, not the mechanism that lifted billions out of poverty. Cronyism and the explosion of government power only blur the picture further.

Layer onto this the collapse of basic literacy and numeracy. When students can’t read well, struggle with math, and can’t write a coherent paragraph, they are more vulnerable to ideological manipulation — and more likely to lean on machines to think for them.

So it shouldn’t shock anyone that almost half of young Americans surveyed want an advanced AI system to create society’s laws, rules, and regulations. Nearly 40% want that AI system to determine human rights and control the world’s most powerful militaries.

RELATED: Almost half of Gen Z wants AI to run the government. You should be terrified.

Yurii Karvatskyi via iStock/Getty Images

How did this happen? Watch how many parents are glued to screens, outsourcing daily life to devices. Is it any wonder their children grow up thinking technology is omnipotent?

Parents should start with something simple: a family movie night featuring the “Terminator” franchise. Let the kids see where blind faith in machines tends to lead.

Better yet, teach them the truth about socialism. Teach them what it does to human beings. Share the books, documentaries, and testimonies exposing socialism’s century of famine, repression, forced labor, and mass murder — horrors still unfolding in Cuba and North Korea.

The evidence is overwhelming, and the verdict is final: socialism fails everywhere it is tried. Now imagine that system fused with an all-seeing AI — a surveillance state that Stalin could only dream of. The thought of an AI-run socialist regime is not dystopian fiction. It is what many young Americans say they want.

They should be careful what they wish for.