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Victor Davis Hanson didn’t whisper. In a recent appearance reported by Townhall, the Hoover Institution’s Martin and Ilie Anderson Senior Fellow in Classics and Military History ripped into what he called a party that looks more Jacobin than Democratic. His point is plain: democratic‑socialist ideas are not just noise on the margins anymore. They are winning elections, and conservatives who keep playing defense will lose the argument — and the country — to a new generation that wants real change.
Hanson’s Warning: Not Your Grandparents’ Democrats
Hanson’s line — “I don’t even think it’s a Democratic Party. I don’t think we should even use that term anymore. It’s a Jacobin party…” — is meant to shock, but it also nails the shift many voters see. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rise in New York City with a platform of rent interventions, public groceries and free transit has become the proof point. Young voters are drawn to big promises. Polling from Gallup and major outlets shows a steady increase in favorable views of “socialism” among younger cohorts. That makes Hanson’s critique a live political problem, not a theater of punditry.
Why Conservatives Can’t Keep Playing Defense
Too many Republicans respond to socialism by pointing at Texas and Florida and saying “see, our way works.” That sells in some places, but it doesn’t persuade a 25‑year‑old in a rent‑burdened city. The right’s current posture is defensive and technocratic. It’s a party of spreadsheets and fine print when it needs a clearer moral and material argument for freedom: free markets, not crony capitalism. If conservatives keep offering the same timid playbook, the left’s simple promises look more appealing by comparison.
Radical Free Markets: What That Actually Means
When Hanson and other conservative thinkers call for “radical free markets,” they don’t mean chaos. They mean bold reforms: aggressive deregulation to smash barriers that protect incumbents, sharp tax cuts to put money back in people’s pockets, dismantling corporate favors that look like small‑business strangulation, and policies that make entrepreneurship cheaper and less risky. Think Javier Milei’s shock‑reform rhetoric in Argentina — not because every policy should be copied, but because the scale and clarity of the offer matters. Young voters respond to clear, big promises. Conservatives should give them freedom, not excuses.
The Stakes: Young Voters, Mamdani, and a Choice for the Right
This is the moment for Republicans to stop apologizing for markets and start selling them. Mawkish defenses of “capitalism with a human face” won’t cut it if that face looks like backroom deals and regulatory capture. The right needs a program that is ideologically crisp and practically generous: more take‑home pay, cheaper starts for small businesses, fewer rules that help giant firms and hurt startups. Otherwise, Zohran Mamdani will be remembered not as an oddball mayor, but as a harbinger of a political realignment conservatives didn’t bother to stop.
Hanson put the question bluntly and conservatives should answer with the same clarity. If Republicans want to win young voters and blunt the appeal of democratic socialism, they must go on offense: offer liberty with muscle, not just nostalgia. It’s time to make free markets not only the policy but the promise. If the right fails to make that case, the voters chasing big government will keep buying what the left is selling — and they’ll get the bill later, while the defenders of freedom are left to complain about what might have been.
