Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Andrew Jackson have little in common beyond one striking fact: Young Americans are revisiting reputations that schools, media, and popular culture once treated as settled.
The trend is not a wholesale endorsement of every decision these men made. It is a rebellion against inherited verdicts.
TMZ may fret that McCarthyism is returning. It isn’t. Institutional deference, however, may be gone for good.
As democratic socialists such as Francesca Hong and Zohran Mamdani have gained traction with voters, some young conservatives have revived interest in McCarthy’s campaign against communist influence in the United States. The slogan “Joseph McCarthy was right” has circulated online alongside renewed discussion of Soviet espionage and foreign political influence from countries such as Cuba and China.
McCarthy’s record remains contested, and the abuses associated with his name should not be waved away. But younger critics are increasingly unwilling to accept the textbook version in which he appears only as a paranoid bully who invented a threat that did not exist. One widely used history resource, for example, describes his methods as bullying tactics that created a climate of fear.
McCarthy is not alone.
Richard Nixon became a viral figure this summer through “Nixon-maxxing,” an online fascination that mixes irony and style with a serious effort to reconsider his foreign-policy record and political downfall. George W. Bush, once a permanent punch line for late-night comedy, now appears in nostalgic images as a cowboy from a more confident American era. Andrew Jackson has also returned to online debate as younger people reassess his nationalism and tariff policy.
None deserves automatic vindication. McCarthy, Nixon, Bush, and Jackson were consequential men with real failures, bitter controversies, and legacies that remain open to dispute.
But their reputations were shaped by institutions that many members of Gen Z no longer trust.
Black Lives Matter activists tried to tear down Jackson’s statue in Washington. Legacy outlets treated Nixon’s name as shorthand for betrayal and corruption. Late-night television and “Saturday Night Live” spent years reducing Bush to a caricature.
When those same institutions lose credibility, their historical judgments lose authority with them.
That loss of trust is measurable. Confidence in higher education fell from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2024. Gen Z reports the highest levels of mistrust toward colleges of any generation, and 59% of students say they fear expressing “right-wing” political opinions in class.
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Young people therefore approach official narratives with a suspicion earlier generations reserved for propaganda. If they want the truth, they need to uncover it themselves.
COVID taught us the hard way.
Most members of Gen Z were in high school, college, or the opening years of adulthood when governments closed schools, restricted work, separated friends, and imposed sweeping health rules. They were told that officials possessed reliable answers, then watched many claims change, collapse, or become subjects of bitter dispute.
The vaccine debate supplied one example. Research identified an increased risk of myocarditis after some COVID vaccinations, particularly among adolescent and young adult males. That finding did not prove every warning about vaccination correct, but it complicated the insistence that skepticism itself was irresponsible or morally wrong.
The release of Anthony Fauci’s diary reinforced the belief among many young Americans that officials presented more certainty in public than they privately possessed.
The result was not merely disagreement over masks, vaccines, distancing, or school closures. It was a broader lesson in institutional fallibility.
Young Americans learned that credentials do not eliminate self-interest, consensus does not guarantee truth, and a confident official narrative may later require substantial revision.
That lesson now shapes how they view both contemporary politics and American history.
Donald Trump’s return to the presidency after Russiagate, two impeachments, criminal prosecutions, and years of predictions that his movement would collapse reinforced the idea that establishment condemnation can increase rather than settle public doubt. Young men voted for him heavily in 2024 and extended the same instinct to figures such as JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The same appetite has helped independent journalists like Nick Shirley build audiences by pursuing stories local governments and established newsrooms neglected.
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This impulse can go wrong sometimes. Contrarianism is not the same as truth, and a historical figure does not become virtuous merely because liberal institutions despised him.
But the refusal to inherit conclusions without question is healthy.
Gen Z is treating history less like a museum exhibit and more like a cold case. It wants the documents, the motives, the context, and the arguments omitted from the standard account.
That approach will not vindicate every accused man. It may confirm some old judgments and overturn others.
The larger significance lies in who now claims the authority to decide.
Schools, television networks, universities, and political movements once expected younger Americans to accept their moral rankings of the past. A growing number of young people now insist on reopening the file themselves.
TMZ may fret that McCarthyism is making a comeback. It isn’t. Institutional deference, however, may be gone for good.
Nick Shirley — the 24-year-old investigative journalist who exposed the shocking depths of alleged day care and social services fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community — has now turned his gaze to another growing issue in America: the rise of communism.
While there are people of all ages and backgrounds who embrace communism, the system that seeks to erase freedom and equalize misery is especially popular among Gen Z.
On this episode of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered,” Sara plays a viral clip from Shirley capturing a young woman arguing in favor of abolishing prisons — even if that means her rapist is allowed to freely roam the streets.
In the video, the woman admits that she is “pro-communism,” including “getting rid of prisons.”
When Shirley pressed her on why she feels prisons need to be abolished, she argued they are not beneficial for society.
“The system of criminality is a very strange way to interact with, like, I guess, humanity in general, and like things that as a species we're not interested in, like, perpetuating. I think it's kind of backwards, and so I'm not certain what prisons are actually doing for our society,” she said.
When Shirley asked her if she’d prefer “to have criminals out in the open,” her answer was a shocking yes.
“Sure, I’m fine with that because the idea of a ‘criminal’ is, like, a little bit funny to me,” she said.
“Let’s just say somebody who has raped a woman — would you like them to be out in the street?” Shirley asked.
“I think my answer is yes, even though that’s a challenging answer to say,” she replied.
Shirley then asked if she felt the same way if she were the woman who had been raped.
“I have been raped, and they are out in the street, and I’m not sure, like, them going to jail is a solution to, like, whatever is going on inside their heart or even my own heart that, like, contributed to that experience that I’m having,” she said. “And I don’t want more people to get raped, but I don’t know for certain that going into a jail in the United States is going to shift anything inside of their, like, operating system so that they’ll make a different choice again.”
Sara is baffled by Shirley’s exchange with the young communism supporter and fears a future where people with these destructive worldviews begin taking positions of power in society.
“These people are going to be CEOs, I guess, someday,” she says.
To see the viral footage, plus another shocking clip where a young man admits on camera he has a job but fraudulently collects food stamps and other benefits, watch the video above.
To enjoy more of Sara's no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
It seems a lot of people are pretending to do more work than they actually do.
While performance art at work comes in many different forms and happens for different reasons, one generation is actually outperforming the others in its efforts to not work: Gen Z.
'The average worker fakes about five hours per week.'
In a survey of full-time American professionals, employees have found remarkable ways to fake productivity.
Shockingly, 66% of employees admitted to faking productivity at work, and 73% of managers said they do it as well.
Gen Z has a particular affinity for it, however, outperforming older generations by 12 points when it comes to slacking off. A whopping 80% of them said they are faking productivity, while Millennials came in at 68% and Gen X at 58%.
The study from Software Finder also revealed some wild tactics employees are taking to make it seem as though they are actually working when they are not.
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The top two methods employees are using to fake work are "moving the mouse periodically" and "keeping a doc or browser tab open"; 56% of respondents said they use those tactics.
Another method used by 43% of full-time workers was purposely responding to non-urgent messages at a slower rate, or "slow-responding."
More than a third of employees said they would log in to a tool they aren't using, while about a quarter of respondents said they would send a strategic message on work apps like Slack or Teams to make it seem as if they were working.
Another 22% said they scheduled emails for later in the day.
All this fake work adds up to a massive amount of time burned over the course of the year. Specifically, the survey stated that the average worker fakes about five hours per week making it seem as though they are working. Multiplied over a year, that's 260 hours, and when divided by an eight-hour work day, that's more than 32 full days of work lost.
However, it may not be the employees' fault.
RELATED: The GOP is blowing it with young men
More than half of respondents said they finished their work at least an hour before the day actually ends, so the rest is lip service.
Who are they faking it for? More than a third said their direct manager, while another 31% said "no one in particular."
The latter is indicative of a trend of not working for the sake of it, as 27% of workers said they were faking productivity because of "general workplace culture."
The next leading reason was due to their managers, who "measure presence over output."
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The Social Security trust fund is projected to run out of money by 2032. Without legislative reforms, retirement benefits for tens of millions of Americans could face significant cuts.
As lawmakers debate how to preserve the program, most proposals focus on raising payroll tax revenue or making other budgetary adjustments. But these discussions miss a larger point: The program itself is increasingly ill-suited for younger generations.
Americans who are decades away from retirement should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and pursue retirement planning through private alternatives.
Rather than forcing Americans into a system that may not deliver on its promises, policymakers should allow young workers to opt out and prepare for retirement in their own way.
America’s younger generations are coming of age amid an affordability crisis. Housing costs, groceries, health insurance, transportation, and higher education consume a growing share of household budgets. In such an environment, financial flexibility matters more than ever.
Yet every paycheck is hit by a 6.2% Social Security payroll tax, withheld with the promise that workers will receive benefits decades later when they reach retirement age. For many Millennials and members of Generation Z, that promise appears increasingly uncertain.
The idea that workers simply “pay in” and later receive back what they contributed has long been misleading. Today’s payroll taxes largely fund benefits for today’s retirees. As demographic pressures strain the system, younger Americans face the prospect of paying into Social Security for decades while receiving far less in benefits than previous generations.
In turn, few Gen Zers count on Social Security to support them in retirement someday. More than half expect to rely on personal retirement accounts as their primary source of income in retirement. Only 35% expect the program to still be around when they retire.
Rather than dragging younger workers through years of uncertain taxation, policymakers should give them a choice. Americans who are decades away from retirement should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and pursue retirement planning through private alternatives.
The freedom to decide how to spend and save one’s income is deeply ingrained in American culture. Some people rent apartments, rely on public transportation, and prioritize international travel. Others buy homes, raise families, and invest heavily in property or small businesses. The diversity of lifestyles that defines the United States is made possible by economic liberty.
Social Security’s mandatory payroll tax limits that liberty, particularly for younger generations who are unlikely to receive the same value from the program as their parents and grandparents. Every dollar directed to Social Security is a dollar that cannot be used to pay down debt, purchase a home, invest in education, build a business, or save independently for retirement.
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Private retirement accounts also offer greater opportunities for long-term growth. Historically, diversified investments held through 401(k)s, IRAs, and other retirement vehicles have generated substantially higher returns than the growth reflected in Social Security benefits. Depending on their investments, 401(k) plans may return 5% to 8% annually, while some Roth IRA portfolios may return 7% to 10%.
In contrast, Social Security payments reflect 1% to 3% annual growth, matching cost-of-living adjustment inflation rates.
Younger workers with decades of investing ahead of them are uniquely positioned to benefit from compound growth. But the ineffective Social Security system holds them back from the thousands to millions in returns available by private-sector investment vehicles.
In an era of accessible investing platforms and unprecedented financial tools, a one-size-fits-all government retirement system makes less sense than ever. Americans are capable of making different choices about their financial futures. They should have the freedom to decide whether Social Security is one of them.
As lawmakers confront Social Security’s looming insolvency, they should look beyond tax increases and accounting fixes. The debate should include a more fundamental question: Why should younger Americans be required to participate in a system they increasingly doubt will deliver on its promises?
Social Security was created for a different era, when workers had fewer options, people did not live as long, and America’s population was booming. Those conditions no longer exist, and it leaves the system unable to afford its original obligations.
If Social Security cannot provide future generations with the same security it once promised, then those generations should be free to pursue their own path. Young Americans deserve the freedom to build their own financial future.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is facing serious backlash after suggesting in an interview with Jesse Watters on Fox News that many young people have been raised with “silver spoons in their mouths” and have had “everything handed to them.”
“Essentially she was saying that Gen Z was born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and that’s why they want socialism. And so then, because of the backlash, she’s now saying that she’s been taken out of context,” BlazeTV host John Doyle explains, before playing the clip of Watters and Leavitt.
“Some of these kids — and I call them kids because they’re in their 20s, and they’ve never had real jobs, and they’re complaining things are expensive. Yes, things are expensive when you don’t have a real job,” Watters told Leavitt.
“Do you think that’s getting traction — complaining?” Watters asked.
“Unfortunately, I do, because this generation, my generation, I hate to say it, Gen Z and those younger than me have been raised with just silver spoons in their mouths, just getting everything handed to them,” Leavitt responded.
“That’s not the values this country was built on. It was built on meritocracy and hard work, pulling up your sleeves, pulling yourself up from your bootstraps, and achieving the American dream,” she added.
“Not to go full Gen Z-tard, but we were raised in the aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis,” Doyle responds. “We were raised in the aftermath of the COVID lockdowns. I mean, we were literally, from every moment in our lives, being spoonfed all of this crap about, yes, communism, but not being fed stuff about free markets don’t actually work.”
“More like, ‘Hey, everybody who’s not a straight white male, you’re awesome and beautiful and capable, and straight white males, you are basically like defective. You are something to be managed, something to be held to a completely separate standard,’” he explains.
Doyle also points out that the audience of Fox News is largely boomers, who are constantly fed Fox News clips of young leftists regurgitating statements like, “I want free health care.”
“That is not at all the same thing as the guy who kept his nose clean and went to school and got his four-year degree and is now applying and can’t get even a ... second-round interview,” he continues.
“It is specifically the plight of the heterosexual white male that is experiencing this,” he adds.
To enjoy more of the truth about America and join the fight to restore a country that has been betrayed by its own leaders, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Federalist Contributor Michael Alfonso won a decisive victory Tuesday night to be the GOP nominee for a Wisconsin-based U.S. House seat. If elected this fall, he would become the youngest member of Congress. Unfinalized results show that, with more than 95 percent of votes tabulated, Alfonso, 26, is projected to win the Republican primary for […]
Every time a woman pays to have food delivered to her door, she is paying to avoid the consequences of government policies.
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