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Brian,

You are a product of Gen X libertarianism -- economics-based and firmly grounded in reason.

The Millennial and Gen Z generations are products of psychology. They are reactions to the reason-based economics paradigm that dominated the neoliberal age. They are letting out all the emotions that that paradigm didn't accommodate.

But this development shouldn't lead you to doubt yourself. At all. The Millennial and Gen Z generations are wrong. As Hayek argued contra Freud, civilization depends in part on the suppression of emotion.* They are letting out repressed emotion because it's cathartic, but the effect is negative. Is the United States better off or worse off since Millennials became working age? Since they promoted both wokeism and the populist response? Millennials are at the heart of both of these emotional reactions. And most people perceive society as getting worse and becoming divided. Emotions lead to tribalism and conflict. It is reason that paves the way to cooperation and peace.

What we need is a rebirth of reason and the suppression of emotion once again. You may not live to see it, but it's something worth fighting for. We're witnessing generations with poor character undermine civilization. I'm for ultimately laying blame on individuals, but to the extent we can make collective judgements (and we should generally avoid doing so), the younger generations are emotionally immature and need to experience disapprobation.

*Hayek is seen as a critic of reason so his claim about emotion might seem confusing. But Hayek was a proponent of the part of reason he felt was unconscious and neglected. He thought we should place less value on conscious reason and more value on unconscious reason because markets operated using unconscious reason and conscious reason failed to plan economies. This is consistent with his opposition to cathartic expressions of emotion. It also explains how he could criticize reason, but also see its value in shaping society, without contradicting himself.