Last Friday, I got to come home and speak to a sold-out room of my conservative neighbors at the Alabama Republican Party Summer Dinner in Montgomery.

Earlier that afternoon, we also hosted the inaugural Project Future Generation Student Summit luncheon alongside Chairman Scott Stadthagen, a gathering of young conservatives from across our state who came together because they believe our generation is worth fighting for and campus clubs are stronger united than divided.

As I stood behind the podium that evening, I asked a question I believe every Republican should wrestle with: What exactly are we trying to conserve?

If conservatism is simply about winning elections, Alabama has already succeeded. If it’s about holding a Republican supermajority, we’ve accomplished that too. If it’s about defeating Democrats every November, few states do it better. But if that’s where our ambition ends, then we’re losing the only fight that ultimately matters, because elections don’t preserve freedom. Generations do.

The moment anyone mentions Generation Z, the stereotypes begin. Lazy. Entitled. Addicted to social media. Uninterested in America. I hear them all the time. After spending the last several years speaking on college campuses, debating students across the country, and talking with thousands of young Americans, I’ve become convinced those stereotypes miss the bigger story.

My generation isn’t looking for handouts nearly as much as it’s looking for purpose. We’re looking for meaning. We’re looking for something worth sacrificing for. We’re looking for the same American Dream our parents and grandparents believed was possible.

The tragedy is that, for years, the loudest voices in our culture have offered us the exact opposite. We’ve been told America is fundamentally broken, faith is outdated, patriotism is embarrassing, masculinity is toxic, and our history is little more than a collection of failures.

We’ve watched institution after institution teach young people to distrust the country that gave them unprecedented freedom, then acted surprised when so many of us feel anxious, isolated, and disconnected. You cannot spend years dismantling every institution that gives people identity and then wonder why an entire generation struggles to answer the question, “Who am I?”

Conservatives are right to recognize that America faces enormous challenges. Our southern border has been overwhelmed. Too many schools have become taxpayer-funded obedience centers that teach students to be suspicious of the nation that funds their education.

At the same time, socialism continues to be marketed to young people by dangling free things and emotional appeals in front of them while quietly encouraging dependence on government instead of responsibility, family, faith, and community. Those are real challenges, but despair has never been a strategy. Hope is.

Over the last year, I’ve debated on ten college campuses across America. Despite everything we’re told, I haven’t found a generation beyond saving. I’ve found students asking hard questions, searching for truth, and increasingly rejecting the lies they’ve been told about America and about themselves. That gives me tremendous optimism, and the numbers should motivate us as well.

In 2024, voter turnout nationwide fell below 59 percent of registered voters, the lowest participation rate in a presidential election since 1988. Here in Alabama, young adults continue to vote below the national average, and only about half of eligible Alabamians between eighteen and twenty-five were even registered to vote last year, while more than three-quarters of Alabamians over sixty-six were registered.

Think about what that means. Before Republicans ever have the opportunity to persuade a young voter, roughly half of Alabama’s youngest eligible citizens never even make it onto the voter rolls.

Yet there was another statistic that deserves far more attention. Alabama was one of only seven states where rural young voters turned out at higher rates than their peers in urban and suburban communities. That tells me something encouraging. The next generation isn’t apathetic, and it certainly isn’t unreachable. It simply hasn’t been challenged to become part of something bigger than itself.

That is why we launched Project Future Generation. This isn’t another committee or another slogan destined to gather dust after election season. It’s an investment in the future of Alabama conservatism and a recognition that every generation has to be won on purpose.

This inaugural year, we’re focused on three priorities: building a statewide Student Strike Force to target voter registration, hosting Student Summits that equip and connect young conservative leaders, and taking a statewide campus tour to meet students where they are instead of expecting them to come to us.

In fact, we didn’t just announce those plans last Friday, we had already begun with our very first Student Summit at lunch. We aren’t waiting for the next election cycle to engage the next generation because the work has already started. 

Scripture reminds us in 1 Timothy 4:12, “Don’t let anyone despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.” That verse is more relevant today than ever. Young conservatives don’t need to wait until they’re thirty, forty, or fifty to lead. We don’t need permission to defend our country, serve our communities, or answer God’s calling on our lives.

Too often we speak about young people as though they’re America’s future. They are, but they’re also America’s present. The future isn’t waiting twenty years to arrive. It’s sitting in our classrooms, walking across college campuses, filling our churches, entering the workforce, and deciding right now what kind of country they’ll inherit and what kind of country they’ll leave behind.

If Republicans want to preserve the values that made America exceptional, we can’t simply celebrate the victories of previous generations. We have to invest in the next one. Winning elections matters, but winning a generation matters even more. If we’re serious about conserving the values we claim to cherish, then our mission cannot end at the ballot box. It has to continue until the next generation not only inherits freedom, but understands why it’s worth preserving.

Brilyn Hollyhand is a 20-year-old political commentator and bestselling author of “Make America Talk Again”. He was appointed in 2026 to chair the Alabama Republican Party’s Project Future Generation.