Are the Children Our Future?
The Pew Research Center has released just about the billionth piece of evidence proving that the Bush era has been a total disaster for conservatives (as if we needed any more). It seems that the 18-29 set, which has always been pretty liberal in its collective heart, is now leaning left by a margin of 25. These are the kids who came of age after 9/11 and have difficulty remembering when they didn’t have an e-mail address and when the GOP wasn’t defined by the Iraq war.
Matthew Yglesias does a good job in crystallizing how most in the liberal smart set will interpret the data:
OK, sure: this is a kind of variation on the “What’s the Matter with Kansas” theory of American conservatism, but updated to reflect post-2006 reality. The unwashed middle, who are willing to vote solely on the basis of “moral values” (and/or crypto-racism), is dwindling, and the younger generation has no interest in this voting style whatsoever.
Political parties are pretty malleable, so I think it’s a better idea to look at what those really big issues are that could unite a broad Right coalition. Mitt Romney tried to make himself the perfect GOP candidate by standing on the thee pillars of “economic conservatism” (“free-trade”), “national security” (pro-war), and “social conservatism” (vague references to “life”). But such things haven’t proved to work too well in the recent past.
In truth, the Big Three that have had the widest popular appeal over the past five years have instead been opposition to racial preferences, opposition to amnesty/immigration restriction, and anti-war foreign policy. Ward Connerly’s civil rights initiative of 2006, which effectively banned affirmative action in the universities, won by a landslide—even though it was opposed by youth icon Barack Obama. The only time the conservative movement really showed its teeth, and has been willing to go against the GOP, was during last summer’s battle over amnesty. I don’t need to go into Iraq, which is increasingly viewed as a disaster even by Republicans (and, more importantly, Reagan Democrats.)
These issues are perhaps the only three that can unite an increasingly fracturing youth population (within an increasingly fracturing population as a whole). And better still, they’re all natural conservative issues, and ones which, with the exception of the opposition to war, don’t really work for Democrats.
And yet, on all of these issues, the GOP has come down on the wrong side—publicly even: opposing Connerly, sponsoring amnesty, and devoutly supporting the war to the point of self-parody.
I agree that on many crucial fronts conservatives have sadly lost the culture war. But it has taken a very stupid party to continue to ignore the most obvious means of getting elected.
Comments
Very good analysis.
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The Stupid Party has failed miserably to capitalize on these factors. However, natural conservative issues may not resonate with young voters who have been indoctrinated from grade school to college with bogus ideologies like liberalism, multiculturalism, anti-Americanisn and white guilt. But let’s not give too much credit to the liberal priesthood of academia and the media. Most young people are apathetic towards the world that exists outside their immediate social bubble. What current events they do follow are more likely to be of an entertainment nature than informative or historical. I would wager that the majority of American youths know more about what Paris Hilton and Brittney did last night than they do what is going on in Iraq. Since these young men and women are not actively striving to discover political truths, and are content with living in their safe little bubbles, they are far more likely to ignorantly accept and support what is “Hollywood cool” and politically fashionable—liberalism, anti-Americanism, multiculturalism, white-guilt.
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Mike Gavin is right. The youth are, largely, a collection of anti-intellectual morons of extended adolescence. They are unable to take serious things seriously and, for the most part, are completely incapable of thinking outside of pithy soundbite phrases for their analysis of a particular issue. Their information of history, culture, and foreign countries is all derived from liberal high school textbooks, post-war American stereotypes, 1960s pedagogical stereotypes, neo-Freudian or else Black Nationalist psychology, overly-emotional readings of Night by Elie Weisel, summaries of complex historical events with dismissive and ideological phrases, and themes from Hollywood films and the popular culture.
Scarcely any of them are well-educated of history, especially in regard to the most important aspects thereof. Let us say, for instance, the Catholic Church or the French monarchy or the Holy Roman Empire—within the past 2,000 years, these three institutions have wielded such a degree of influence on the development of nations and customs that they deserve to be at least generally understood. As such, the youth know about these things the least. They are most familiar with the marginal and over-rated: Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony, and the Beatles.
About every attempt at legitimate analysis by the avowed ‘political’ or ‘religious’ youths is an exhibition in half-understood stilted language that rarely crosses the borders of political correctness, and if it does, it creeps past political correctness discreetly, unintentionally, with mental and emotional reservation, a bit of guilt, and a qualification of not meaning offense.
I have this very negative view of the youth because of considerable experience. After all, I am a member of the demographic and the overwhelming majority of the people with whom I regularly converse and most frequently encounter and are guilty of 90% of what I wrote. The past five years of my life have convinced me, without a doubt, that the if the youth are our future then we are in big trouble.
My hope is that something very significant happens soon to terminate the pattern.
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Young people are becoming more Hispanic. How do these figures come out if you look at whites 18 to 29?
This is another reason to stop immigration to 25,000 per year. This is another reason to vote against McCain. Vote Chuck Baldwin unless McCain takes the no amnesty, no legalization, pledge from NumbersUSA.
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Well put, Charles. We should do coffee sometime. I know, lets go to Starbucks so we can observe these multiculturalized, latte-sipping youths in actions.
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Good stuff. Once people get married, have kids, and worry about “good schools,” everything changes and they are much more conservative. But Bush and his 80 perenter Rockefeller Republicanism coupled with Nixonian secrecy and Wilsonian wars basically make him a disaster on every front. Real conservatism would still sell and win elections, but the window is closing because of mass immigration.
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Only imbeciles and scoundrels would support the vast majority of Republican politicos. So young people can’t be all that stupid. Of course, many young people like Ron Paul. But Ron Paul is worth far more than the rest of his colleagues put together.
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@Charles
“Their information of history, culture, and foreign countries is all derived from liberal high school textbooks, post-war American stereotypes, 1960s pedagogical stereotypes, neo-Freudian or else Black Nationalist psychology, overly-emotional readings of Night by Elie Weisel, summaries of complex historical events with dismissive and ideological phrases....”
It is a fact that those who use big words often do so to hide the fact they have nothing to say
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You can have television or you can have freedom and democracy, you can’t have both. One-sided debate produces one party states. I believe the existence of television by its very nature will sooner or later destroy freedom. Into this reality of mock democratic debate steps a mock political opposition, the Republicans.
Kansas has voted for Republicans because they believed that the Republicans would defend “the old laws and the old ways” but the Republicans have no intention or desire of doing so ("but they haven’t actually halted any of these transformations . . ."). The Republicans aren’t a real political party they are merely a lobby group that represent the interests of big business to cultural power. Elections are just a distasteful chore they must go through; the party elite are snobs who detest their voters (that came through loud and clear during the amnesty debacle). They run their politics just like modern American executives run their corporations: everything for the quarterly report. They have never done a thing about affirmative action or the borders because that would be politically incorrect, it would upset the dominant Liberal establishment and interfere with their lobby work for big business. What is good for their constituents or the nation just doesn’t enter into it. The leaders live behind the gates, not in America, and they actually welcome cultural destruction and look forward to the day when, they believe, economics will be the only issue. They figure they’ll be able to triangulate during the coming demographics change. They are in for a rude surprise.
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