A new poll finds that nearly half of young people feel the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms.
The survey asked 1,600 high school and college students several questions, including: “Do you think the federal government threatens your own personal rights and freedoms, or not?”
Forty-six percent responded yes, 35 percent no, and the rest unsure.
Underscoring those results, it also found more than half, 54 percent, would rather have a smaller government with fewer government programs and lower taxes, but 43 percent said the country needs more government programs in order to maintain its way of life over the next decade, reports Young America’s Foundation, which commissioned the poll along with The Federalist.
The results show young people are largely split on the role of government versus the need for freedom, but there is a silver lining.
YAF spokesman Spencer Brown said it is “heartening to see that nearly half of Gen Z students hold a realistically skeptical view of government given the suffocating indoctrination students receive in their classrooms and from our culture.”
“Conservatives still have work to do on this front, but showing the existence of a healthy percentage of students who distrust government suggests half our job is already done there, we just need to activate those students to share the dangers of government — and the benefits of personal freedom — with their peers,” he told The College Fix via email.
The poll also found that 30 percent of students don’t feel safe expressing controversial or unpopular opinions in the classroom.
On a different topic, the poll found young people “say it’s important to buy a home and make ‘a lot of money’ than to marry, have children, and commit to a faith,” The Federalist reports. “A majority of poll respondents said they thought marrying was an important life goal, just not in as high numbers as those who rated a house, money, and health as ‘extremely or very important.'”
The survey was conducted by Echelon Insights from April 24 to 27 and polled 800 current high school students and 800 current post-secondary students ages 13 to 22.
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