The Rightward Rebellion: Why Young Men Are Flocking to Conservatism
Modern American society seems dedicated to punishing youthful masculinity. Young Millennial and GenZ men have noticed.
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by Nate Hochman
April 16, 2025
Young men once occupied a special — even unique — place in the West. Alexander the Great was 20 years old when he became king of Macedonia, and 25 when he conquered the Persian Empire; by the age of 30, he had brought most of the known world to heel. Augustus was 17 when he inherited Julius Caesar’s will; Charlemagne was 24 when he became the undisputed king of the Franks; and Napoleon was 24 when he became a general in the French army. On July 4, 1776, James Madison was 25; Alexander Hamilton was 21; and James Monroe was just 18. Christ himself was estimated to be roughly 30 — not young, per se, but hardly old, either — when he began his ministry.
The West’s greatest achievements were secured by men in the prime of their lives who were eager for glory, ready to die for immortality, and determined to write their names in the annals of their people’s history. From the early Viking raiders who sailed westward to explore and conquer alien worlds, to the European kings who struggled to unite and forge nations, to the Christian missionaries and explorers who crossed oceans to bring their God to new lands, Western Man’s undying thirst for new frontiers drove his civilization onward to destiny.
They were the dreamers, poets, artists, statesmen, priests, philosophers, soldiers, and kings whose restless and irrepressible desire to know, explore, create, and conquer painted a civilization upon the empty canvas of primordial Europe. It was young Western men who poured out from the shores of their respective kingdoms to conquer continents, build a global empire, and give birth to the modern world.
For what young men gave to the West, the West gave back to them in kind. Youthful masculinity was afforded a certain kind of poetic glory in the West. But today, it is precisely what all of modern American — and more broadly, Western — society seems dedicated to punishing. The very virtues that were once celebrated and idolized by the bards and poets are now depicted as vices by the modern social and cultural regime. The very structure of American life appears, at times, to be organized around suppressing the same distinct ethos that originally shaped it.
In practice, this manifests as both an attack on young men specifically and an attack on masculinity in general — not just on the “gender norms” we hear about incessantly today, but on the masculine virtues and ways of viewing and interacting with the world.
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