Forty-two percent of American undergraduates told the Buckley Institute's annual poll they prefer socialism to capitalism. That number has held steady for five consecutive years now. But this year's survey added a question that makes the socialism number look quaint: 22 percent of college students said America deserved 9/11.

Twenty-two percent. Nearly one in four. About 3,000 people died that day.

The Buckley Institute, affiliated with Yale University, has been running this undergraduate survey long enough to track patterns, and the patterns are getting worse. Forty-five percent of students now say violence is justified to stop what they call "hate speech." Forty percent want offensive speech treated as a criminal offense. Half — 50 percent — say America is "inextricably linked to white supremacy." The numbers paint a portrait of a generation that has been educated into contempt for the country that built every campus they're sitting on.

The socialism preference is almost the least alarming finding. Forty-seven percent of undergraduates believe Cuba or the Soviet Union offered a better economic model than American capitalism. The Soviet Union killed roughly 100 million people across the 20th century under various socialist regimes. Cuba's citizens still flee on rafts. But sure — better economic model.

Forty-eight percent of respondents said they couldn't be close friends with someone from the opposing political party. Another 48 percent said they'd refuse to sit in a classroom with a professor whose ideology differed from their own. These aren't fringe radicals self-selecting into the survey. This is the mainstream of American higher education.

The 9/11 number didn't materialize from nowhere. Far-left streamer Hasan Piker made "America deserved 9/11" a slogan years ago, and it filtered through campus culture the way these things always do — first as edgy provocation, then as something a fifth of undergraduates are comfortable affirming to pollsters. Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is running against Republican Mike Rogers in a race where this sentiment isn't just campus talk — it's entering the electorate. The generation that grew up hearing this framing is now old enough to vote and run for office.

The counterargument writes itself: these are young people, they'll grow out of it, campuses have always leaned left. Governor DeSantis tried the direct approach at New College of Florida — replacing the administration, rewriting the mission. The Buckley Institute has been measuring the problem for five years straight. It isn't correcting. Forty-two percent preferring socialism in year one. Forty-two percent in year five. The needle isn't moving because the pipeline feeding students into these views hasn't changed.

Sixty-five percent of undergraduates still say they're proud to be American, which sounds reassuring until you realize that means 35 percent aren't — and the ones who aren't are the same ones telling pollsters that mass murder was deserved and that the country that gave them subsidized tuition is built on white supremacy.

Next year is the 250th anniversary of the American founding. It's also 25 years since September 11th. Forty-two percent of the people we're educating prefer the system that lost. Twenty-two percent think the attacks were earned.