At Mount Vernon and Washington, DC, YAF Showed Why America’s Future Still Has Champions

At Mount Vernon and Washington, DC, YAF Showed Why America’s Future Still Has Champions

On August 6-8, Legal Insurrection Foundation representatives Amy Noto and Nora Clinton attended Young America’s Foundation’s 48th Annual National Conservative Student Conference. The conference began with a soaring Freedom Rally at George Washington’s Mount Vernon and then continued in Washington, D.C. We left deeply grateful to YAF — and especially to Allison Houck — for the gracious hospitality, the seriousness of purpose, and the privilege of taking part in the largest National Conservative Student Conference in history.

The choice of Mount Vernon was inspired. To gather young conservatives at George Washington’s home was to bring them to the sacred ground of the exceptional American experiment. Washington was not merely first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen; he was the statesman whose character made liberty credible. He commanded armies, presided over the Constitutional Convention, became the first president, and then showed the world that power could be held with restraint and surrendered with dignity. At Mount Vernon, the students could feel that lesson. America was built by men and women who knew liberty required virtue. YAF placed that truth before them with beauty and force.

The “Freedom at 250” rally opened the conference with a fitting sense of history. Ben Shapiro gave the gathering its keynote force, reminding young Americans that this nation “was forged in challenge, not comfort,” and built by men and women who pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to secure God-given rights protected by the Constitution.

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson added a transatlantic and classical note, making the occasion feel not only American, but civilizational: a celebration of liberty, law, courage, memory, and ordered freedom. Isabel Brown brought the urgency of a rising generation. Andrew Klavan exhibited the wit and depth of a storyteller formed by the Western canon. George Allen, Jason Miyares, Cabot Phillips, and Scott Walker each added a distinctive voice to a program that was patriotic and serious, yet joyful and alive with hope.

The Washington, D.C., portion carried the spirit from Washington’s estate into the capital city that bears his name. Students heard from leaders whose lives showed different forms of service to the Republic. Dr. Ben Carson embodied discipline, faith, and intellectual seriousness. His reminder that “America is the only country with a dream” captured the moral imagination of the gathering. Scott Jennings brought the wisdom and experience of a conservative who argues in the nation’s most contested media arenas.

Scott Walker spoke with needed clarity. The choice, he warned, is “between freedom or socialism.” In Reaganesque terms: “we win, they lose.” He urged conservatives to “tell the story” and remind the young that socialism and communism have always failed. They continue to fail now, in places such as Venezuela and North Korea. The speakers reminded students that freedom has enemies, decline is not destiny, and renewal begins when citizens defend what they have inherited.

Again and again, the speakers returned to a common concern: the anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Westernism that have saturated too much of our education, culture, and public life. They did not speak of these forces as abstract disagreements. They spoke of them as corrosive ideologies that darken the mind, harden the heart, and extinguish gratitude. Their hope was that young people such as those gathered by YAF would not merely resist these falsehoods, but defeat them — by recovering truth, restoring moral confidence, defending the Jewish people and the West, and returning good values to the center of American public life.

We were especially grateful for the opportunity to exhibit at the conference. We spoke with numerous students about the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s mission and projects. Those conversations were especially rewarding. Students came with thoughtful questions, sincere interest, and a desire to defend free speech, expose campus radicalism, support viewpoint diversity, and build institutions worthy of a free people.

We also met visitors from Europe and Asia who spoke with genuine concern about the future of freedom in their own countries. They understood what is at stake. They were also visibly encouraged — indeed, almost euphoric — to see that the United States has such a phenomenal conservative youth organization as YAF, forming young people in patriotism, courage, and love of liberty.

The students and guests we met were courteous, enthusiastic, thoughtful, and serious. Many came from colleges and universities across the United States. Others had come from abroad. What united them was a shared conviction that Western civilization is worth understanding, defending, and renewing. In conversation after conversation, we found people who understood that liberty is not self-sustaining. It must be taught. It must be practiced. It must be argued for. And it must be lived.

That is what made the event so encouraging. At a time when socialism is repackaged as compassion and grievance is sold as sophistication, YAF offered something better: gratitude, courage, and conviction. It reminded students that America’s story is not a tale of inevitable decline. It is a summons to renewal. Free markets, limited government, strong families, religious liberty, and constitutional order are not relics. They are the durable architecture of human flourishing. YAF has spent generations teaching young people to see that architecture, defend it, and build upon it.

No country is perfect. But America is the best hope for ordered liberty the world has ever known. That is why education must be restored to its true purpose. It should teach students to seek truth, cultivate virtue, love what is noble, understand their inheritance, and prepare for citizenship. Too often, it now does the opposite. Too many institutions have been captured by a Marxist hostility to the West. It is an ideology of envy, violence, resentment, and it ruins whatever it touches. As a survivor of communism, I have seen this firsthand. I know what happens when gratitude gives way to grievance. I know what happens when truth becomes propaganda, when classrooms become instruments of control, and when the young are taught to despise the civilization that made their freedom possible.

That is why Daniel Di Martino’s appearance as one of YAF’s speakers mattered so much. A Venezuelan economist and freedom advocate, he spoke with the authority of lived experience, and students responded to him with remarkable enthusiasm. He has warned that “if socialism ever comes to America, it will be through votes, not bullets,” and that many who think they are choosing Nordic comfort are really choosing Venezuela’s disaster. His lesson is plain. Socialism multiplies poverty. Communism crushes the human being. National socialism and communism murdered millions of innocents, and both still rear their ugly heads whenever hatred is dressed up as collective grievance and entitlement.

YAF’s achievement is tremendous because it does more than host impressive events. It forms citizens. It takes young people who may feel isolated on hostile campuses and gives them history, friendship, confidence, and a cause worthy of sacrifice. It introduces them to economics, faith, constitutionalism, moral courage, and the long inheritance of Western civilization. It teaches them that conservatism is not merely a reaction against the present. It is an act of stewardship toward the future.

That matters because the next generation is being asked to choose. It can choose the false security of bureaucratic control, the bitterness of perpetual grievance, and the seductions of ideologies that have failed wherever they have been fully tried. Or it can choose ordered liberty, personal responsibility, patriotism, faith, family, enterprise, and the hard but ennobling work of self-government.

After attending this conference, I feel more hopeful. The students we met were not retreating from the fight for America’s future. They were preparing for it. They know freedom is preserved by education, courage, gratitude, discipline, and action. YAF has given them more than a conference. It has given them formation, fellowship, and a true vision of America as worthy of love. For that achievement — and for reminding us that America still has courageous young defenders — YAF deserves our admiration, our praise, and our thanks.

Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.

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