(LifeSiteNews) — In a recent episode of the New York Times podcast Interesting Times, host Ross Douthat interviewed Yale law and history professor Samuel Moyn about Moyn’s book Gerontocracy in America, which argues that older Americans have concentrated wealth, political power, jobs, and housing in ways that disadvantage younger generations.

During the discussion of potential reforms, Moyn raised ideas for adjusting the voting system. “I’ve gotten in some hot water for proposing we consider overweighting the votes of younger people or assigning the youngest eligible voters proxy votes for the unrepresented children of our country,” Moyn said.

“Why not assign them to those children’s parents?” Douthat asked.

“Because there’s a divergence of interests between parents and children,” Moyn claimed. “I think it’s likelier that young people – not people who are raising families – will have the best insight into the interests of children.”

I try to keep an open mind about new ideas and opinions, but this take on parents and children is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Douthat’s response is perfect: pic.twitter.com/tx26XZxpxw

— Caleb Wait (@calebwait) August 4, 2026

The Yale academic continued, “I think parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interests of their children. I think part of our goal as parents, but also as a society, is trying to make sure that children aren’t the hostages of their parents, as much as we rely on parents to raise them.”

Douthat responded to the argument stating, “I think that’s daft. I think it’s absurd to imagine that a 24-year-old recent college graduate has a better assessment of the interests of my own children than I do. And I say this with all due respect to 24-year-old recent college graduates, of whom I hope to be the parent of in nine years or so.” He later said that in his experience, “parents are more likely to be the hostages of their children.”

Sharp responses to this exchange ensued across social media, including one from Mount St. Mary’s University philosophy professor Josh Hochschild, who described Moyn’s framing as “liberalism at its purest.”

“All relations, even familial ones, are reducible to power struggles, inherently agonistic,” Hochschild wrote. “Justice isn’t seeking a common good in trust with friends, it is balancing the inherently competing interests of enemies.”

Radio host Hugh Hewitt highlighted the proposal’s departure from societies’ recognition of the order of nature as proceeding from God the Creator, commenting that the “winsome restraint” of Douthat to the proposal was “off the charts.” Continuing, he wrote:

The history of humanity – and the United States Constitution – is that parents are in charge of their children’s upbringings. Period. End of story.

If you want to assign votes to parents based on the number of kids, amend the Constitution. That might even run the gauntlet of passage and ratification. But to assign those theoretical votes to other than parents or legal guardians is, to put it gently, is wildly inconsistent with thousands of years of history and theology.

Cynical Publius, an X commentator with over 322,000 followers, analyzed Moyn’s proposal as a representation of totalitarian Marxist and fascist ideologies, observing:

One of the tenets of most forms of totalitarianism, including Marxism and Naziism, is to destroy the family as the basic building block of society and replace it with the State.

Moyn is suggesting that parents should not have the right to speak for their children, and that third parties – presumably those chosen by a government led by evildoing ‘experts’ like Moyn – should speak on behalf of those children instead.

This is not a new idea. Hitler embraced this idea. Stalin embraced this idea. Mao embraced this idea.

A father and engineer named Steven P. Smith concurred in his response to the clip on X, stating, “The Left has always viewed the family as the greatest threat to their lust for power. This is yet another in an endless list of attempts to undermine it.”

Another response from an account identifying as a “homeschool evangelist” asserted: “That creep shouldn’t be anywhere near kids… You know who wants to keep parents and children separate? Predators.”

JD Flynn, editor of The Pillar, seemed to concur, simply commenting, “Check this guy’s hard drive.”

It was recently announced that Douthat, a Catholic, would be leaving his columnist role at the New York Times to become a journalist for 60 Minutes on CBS. Previously a senior editor for The Atlantic, Douthat specializes in topics related to religion, politics and society. He is also a film critic for National Review.

Moyn is the Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, with research interests in modern European intellectual history and Jewish studies.

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