On Tuesday, Donald Trump is expected to become the official presidential nominee for the Republican Party. Some millennial conservatives seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, we face a majority of people our age who are striving for socialism, and on the other, a presidential nominee who is unlike any conservative leader we’ve ever had.
Millennials already have a reputation for being politically disengaged, but young conservatives who aren’t on board the Trump Train see a particularly bleak road ahead. It would be easy for us to disconnect given the circumstances.
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So, why stay engaged?
Acclaimed author Eric Metaxas recently spoke at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver and provided a compelling answer to this question.
His argument is that if you care for others, you are concerned for their physical well-being, their economic climate, and their freedom from oppression. We can’t properly care for those around us if we aren’t interested in how the government affects their lives.
This argument extends to the people in need around the world. If we want citizens of every nation to have an improved quality of life, liberty, and economic status, we must want a just government that protects the rights of its people.
If there’s one thing American millennials have proven they do care about, it’s those less fortunate than themselves.
2015’s Millennial Impact Report showed that 84 percent of millennial employees made charitable donations in 2014. According to the same report in 2013, 73 percent of millennials had given their time to serve a nonprofit organization the previous year.
Though America has strayed from some of what makes its existence exceptional, we still provide a symbol of hope for struggling countries around the world. Countless peoples still look to us to lead the way and demonstrate how government should run.
Politics matters because it influences the way people live, and often their entire quality of life.
Millennials have proven that it’s easy to replace political involvement with civic duty. Volunteering and donating to charity are certainly more rewarding than fighting endless battles on the nature of man, the role of government, and constitutional interpretation. However, millennials shouldn’t be deeply moved for the causes of social justice while forgetting about politics. The two are inextricably tied.
It may seem like the traditional values of the Republican Party that lift people out of poverty and allow them to thrive in a free and just society have been replaced by big government and welfare programs. But let’s not lose sight of the reason we fight for conservatism. If keeping our guns and paying our student loans off faster isn’t motivation enough, think of the people in our society who need help the most, and even those around the world who find great hope for progress and freedom in the American experiment of limited government and individual liberty.
