The Return of Ambition

On the Appeal of Trump

Why are so many young men excited about the presidency of Donald Trump? What is responsible for the “vibe shift” so many have noticed in Trump’s second term? I’m sure there are many answers to such questions, but one of the most insightful I’ve seen was written last week by Mana Afsari for The Point Magazine. In this article, entitled “The Lost Boys at the Beginning of History,” Afsari recounts her time spent at two very different conferences in 2024: on the right, the National Conservativism conference, and on the left, a conference called Liberalism for the 21st Century.

The whole article is worth reading. Afsari understands better than most what is driving young men (and women for that matter) to enthusiastically support Donald Trump: the return of ambition, both individual and national. For many decades Americans have been barraged with a assault on their history and heritage. Our politicians, our universities, and our culture have insisted that America is not only evil, but uniquely so. We’re evil because we’re “racist,” because we stole all of our land from indigenous peoples, because we trash the environment, because we oppress women and “sexual minorities,” etc. The list of horrors is virtually endless. Some of us are evil, anyway. Certain protected classes, apparently, are exempted.

Many young people today have never known an America where what Roger Scruton called a “culture of repudiation” wasn’t the reigning cultural narrative, a narrative that “dismisses ‘every aspect of our cultural capital’ with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ ‘homophobia,’ and ‘sexism.’” And then Donald Trump came on the scene and said, in effect, “You don’t have to live like that anymore. You don’t have to hate yourself and hate your country. We can be great again. You can be great again.” Despite the MAGA slogan having been there from the beginning of Trump’s political career, his team really seemed to discover how to fire people up with ambition for greatness near the end of his third campaign. MAGA came into its own and Americans were no longer embarrassed by the thought: why wouldn’t we want to make America great again, having seen the effects of decades of cultural repudiation?

There is an inherent desire to build something great in the heart of every little boy. Only a sustained campaign of repudiation can kill that flame. That is indeed what we’ve seen in our country for many years. But that time has come to an end.

As Afsari put it, commenting on the difference she noticed between the listless and despairing attenders of the Liberalism for the 21st Century conference and the vitality exhibited by those at the National Conservative conference, the “NatCons addressed questions of the heart, recognizing that the young need ideals and aspirations—and most of all, a vocation.” Later in her piece she interviews a young man (under the pseudonym of Lucas), who explains to her why he was drawn to Trump and movements like National Conservatism. Commenting on our societies’ woke scolds, Lucas tells Afasari that

I think their whole ideology is based off of oppressing those with ambition, who actually have the gumption to go out and do something and build something on their own. . . . The people who make humanity great, the innovators, the builders, the winners in society, they look at the winners and tell them, ‘You’re evil, and the only reason you’re at the position that you’re at is because you exploited other people.’ It’s antithetical to the way that a lot of young men work.

And young men like Lucas have had enough. Despite repeated attempts to smear them as such, they aren’t filled with resentment; they simply want to get to work building, innovating, and making their nation great again. This seems to be the reason why innovators like Elon Musk have gotten behind Trump so enthusiastically, and even why men like Mark Zuckerberg, while not completely admitting the role they played in illegitimately suppressing true information, and propping up lies, about Trump, are themselves excited about what the future holds in store under Trump’s second term. At the very least the Zuckerberg’s of the world seem to desire to get in on the excitement of building greatness, rather than continuing to further the culture of repudiation.

Afsari’s own biography is fascinating in this regard. “Raised just outside of the District by immigrants in liberal counties,” as she describes herself,

and coming of age at the end of Obama’s liberal renaissance, I spent my college years—and Trump’s first term—on a progressive campus in California. Since graduating in 2020, I had worked at large government agencies and mainstream think tanks. But like many young people all over the country, I have been searching for thinking and meaning beyond the technocratic liberal consensus.

She is part of a wave of young people who are finding that vitality increasingly on the Right.

While, Afsari continues, “more and more of my female friends at the time were embracing polyamory as a way to grandfather in situationships or infidelities” they were “told in special seminars that monogamy was a colonial construct and should be discarded anyway.” Afsari, however, as “a child of divorce, as a young woman,” realized that

my primary concern was having models for healthy relationships—not resisting colonialism in my dating life. I had no interest in subverting things—monogamy, moral norms, courtship, the nuclear family, faith, a classical education—that I’d never had or known in the first place. I wanted a serious boyfriend.

There is a great hunger for greatness today; ambition is back on the menu. Christians, more than anyone, should know where true greatness is to be found: in serving God with excellence, according to his creational design for all realms of life.

And yet Christians often struggle with the idea of ambition. The Bible condemns selfish ambition, but not the ambition to do great things. Selfish ambition seeks to advantage oneself to the disadvantage of others. It is the desire to advance in some way, whether materially, socially, or otherwise, no matter what it takes to do so (lying, stealing, cheating, harming other people, etc.). This is clearly wrong. But the ambition to do great things is built into the very fabric of our being. It was placed there by God, and it is right and good. The Apostle Paul had a an ambition to preach the gospel where none had preached before him (Rom 15:20). Israel was called to be “strong and courageous” as they prepared to enter the land of promise (Deut 31:6). To be strong and courageous, to take courage in order to overcome mighty obstacles is a common exhortation in the Bible. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23–24). Even recognizing the specific issue of whether one can eat meat sacrificed in pagan temples, Paul’s words in 1 Cor 10:31 are relevant as well: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” In whatever you do, do it with excellence, with godly ambition; do it for God’s glory. We were created to serve our families, churches, nations, and God with godly ambition, and our lives will be hollow and purposeless unless we do so. The only alternative is a listless, stultifying, destructive apathy.

Ambition will not disappear because of the efforts of the warriors of cultural repudiation, whether of political and cultural leftists, or of the evangelicals who ape them in their denunciations of the glories of America’s past and of Western civilization. It will simply be redirected toward resentful evil. Instead of condemning the ambition of young people on the right today, we should seek to do whatever we can to help ensure it continues to be directed toward that which is truly excellent.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Ben C. Dunson is Founding and Contributing Editor of American Reformer. He is also Professor of New Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Greenville, SC), having previously taught at Reformed Theological Seminary (Dallas, TX), Reformation Bible College (Sanford, FL), and Redeemer University (Ontario, Canada). He lives in the Greenville, SC area with his wife and four boys.

2 thoughts on “The Return of Ambition

  1. Ambition in and of itself is neither good nor bad. It is the target of one’s ambition that defines the character of that ambition.

    And so let’s look at what Trump is driving at. When he said ‘Make America Great Again,’ what were the time periods when Trump thought America was great and when it wasn’t? If memory serves, America lost it greatness during the Presidencies of Barak Obama and Joe Biden. And so for the time period before that, what was America? From our early colonial days up until the end of the Civil War, what was America? During the period of Reconstruction, what was America? During Jim Crow, what was America? And has America been in the post Jim Crow era?

    During all of those time periods, America was a mix. America started with a belief in racial superiority as part of its foundation. That can be found in The Constitution, societal beliefs and practices, and our laws. It could also be found in our acquisition of land and our treatment of Native Americans. And even though the Civil War was fought in large part to eliminate or preserve slavery, depending on which state is being referenced, the belief in racial superiority permeated throughout America in both the South and the North. We should note here that being an abolitionist implied nothing about one’s belief in or rejection of racial superiority. We still have significant vestiges of systemic racism which are recognized, denied,, or embraced.

    Our labor history is full of exploitation and violence as well as some victories over the two. Our military has often been used to initiate or support oppression practiced by others over the people of their own nations. There are times, however, when we intervened with good intentions. We have embraced a form of capitalism, which is the same form employed when baby boomers were growing up. And what we see with the current form, we see both income and wealth disparities grow between the economic classes and the races. And then there is the history of sexism in our nation.

    Currently, we are facing the early consequences of man-caused climate change. We are seeing increases in extreme weather conditions and in wildfire seasons. The changes in the weather are affecting people’s access to food, water, and livable conditions. Much of the causes from human activity come from our ways of life and what is required to support that way of life. But we should note here how many are shut out from desirable ways of life.

    So is ambition good or bad? It would seem that ambition aimed at acknowledging and addressing wrong and harmful practices that so permeate our history is good. So is also the ambition to repeat and expand what was good in our history.

    But the ambition that denies or minimizes what needs to be acknowledged and corrected is not good and will lead to even more harm. Also, the ambition to be treated as being superior to others not good. After all, aren’t most of our wrongful past actions those motivated by the delusional belief in or ability to become superior to others?

    And so when Dunson points to Trump’s ambitions, which set of ambitions is Trump putting on display? After all, ambition, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad.

  2. I sent email to American Reformer daring this writer and several others to respond to sincere critique. Let’s see if they do.

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