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America’s Irreconcilable Differences
As I close in on 60 years on this earth, it occurs that the absolute last thing I want to be is one of those people. You know the type. Every time they inhale they feel compelled to exhale their inexhaustible disdain for everything new and for the latest iteration of “young people these days.” I myself stopped keeping tabs on the accepted terminology for this or that iteration of the species after Generation X. “They must be good at algebra,” I thought, and then pressed on with life.
Even now, I’m not much inclined to do a lot of sneering and griping about “millennials,” or their inexperience in life relative to fossils like me. It was millennials, after all, who volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces and who dispatched the blood-thirsty maniacs of ISIS to Dante’s Inferno, along with Iran’s top terrorist, Qassem Soleimani. Any generation that produces warriors of such skill and determination can’t be all bad. Besides which, having had the pleasure of working alongside a few specimens of the “millennial” generation in recent years, I’ve been impressed both with their audacious spirit and their technical skill (I can type more quickly than most of them, but I can’t navigate various software programs with anything approaching the wizard-like speed of these people).
Of course, there are “ne’er do wells” in every generation. In fact (and please don’t tell anyone this), but malcontents, deviants, vandals, and murderers have been part of the human experience since around the time of Adam and Eve, and no generation since then has escaped either the weaknesses or the glories of human nature. The Greatest Generation, after all, gave us both Churchill and Stalin, even as their successors bequeathed us JFK and Castro, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and David Duke.
So that when people barely into their 20s launch into silly little tirades against capitalism, which tirades are chronicled and broadcast to the world on their smartphones (brought to them courtesy of capitalism), their stomachs well fed even as their minds are starving, I’m inclined to cut them some slack. That is, as long as they don’t trample on the rights of those around them (about which more in a moment). Could they benefit from at least a modicum of skepticism about the latest fads and precepts in progressive doctrine? Of course.
Still, while I’m willing to overlook the comparative scarcity of understanding on the part of those who’ve yet to learn some of life’s more enduring lessons, I reserve my most withering criticism for those who are my age and older, who really ought to know better than to wallow in a state of resentment and perpetual victimhood, forever unwilling to lift their eyes above pigmentation or some other sociological construct to see the sheer wonder and potential of free people. Ours is the generation, as President Reagan’s speechwriter Peter Robinson recently pointed out to me, that saw first-hand the fact that when you reduce the size and appetite of government, the economy grows; and when you have a strong military you can face down the acquisitive threats of monolithic totalitarian regimes. Those lessons should have resonated.
The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, along with the irrefutable connection between free markets, free people and increasing prosperity marked, in the minds of many of us, a fresh start. These are the successes that ought to have been passed down to our children and their children as part of the continuing and rich heritage of western civilization in general and America in particular. Ours is a country not without shortcomings and hard lessons, but it is a country which has learned from those hard lessons, which constantly strives to better itself, and which remains to this day the beacon toward which people from all parts of the globe aspire.
Instead, a sense of opportunity has been replaced by envy, excellence has been replaced by resentment, tenacity, and the drive to succeed have been replaced by endless excuses for lack of effort and mediocrity. The results now manifest themselves all around us on a daily basis as our cities burn; the murder rate soars in our major cities while the police are vilified, defunded, and demoralized; small businesses into which families have poured their savings and their life’s work are destroyed by mindless mobs; and innocent people are assaulted by moronic goons who haven’t the foggiest idea of what they are trying to accomplish.
American has gone from the fiery brilliance of a young mind like Charles Krauthammer a generation ago to David Hogg, while Western Civilization has gone from the wisdom and grace of St. John Paul II to Greta Thunberg. I’ve previously written on how we got here, but the fact remains that we are faced with a yawning progressive dystopia that continues to seduce the inexperienced while promising to satisfy the Jacobinical appetites of the permanently malcontent.
But make no mistake; with its promises to destroy America’s constitutional separation of powers by adding additional Justices to the Supreme Court so as to attain a permanent rubber stamp on progressive initiatives; with its commitment to install four Democrat senators by granting statehood to Washington DC and Puerto Rico; by granting citizenship and eventually the right to vote to millions of people who came into the country illegally; by abolishing the Senate’s filibuster rule which serves as a structural brake on pure majoritarianism; and with the assistance of a media-turned propaganda bullhorn for the progressive movement, what Democrats now propose to do is to create a one-party government to enact an agenda that is unAmerican and antithetical to the ideas of freedom, self-government, and self-determination that generations have fought to preserve.
Those who are either blinded by their own racial fixations or radicalized by their own bitter sense of entitlement are greasing the skids for their own downfall and that of a great nation. It remains to be seen, even if the Democrats lose in their current effort, whether the differences between us can be bridged. It’s tough, after all, to compromise with those who mean to destroy you. However, those of us who understand how high the stakes are, have both an opportunity and the duty to vote to restore order and the rule of law, thereby buying a little more time to get it right.
Published in General
We are about to see if America can be saved or if the cancer is terminal.
If you don’t get it right, you get what’s left.
But there’s this:
From “Christmas Bells”
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”
The most annoying thing about those people is that on the long road of victory in the Cold War, those self-same knuckleheads were nothing but speed bumps. We won anyway, but now, a diminished Russia and its 50% of Italy’s economy, its rusting tanks, listing navy, and out-of-date air force terrifies their socks off. Where were you twerps when we could have used you?
Back on Feb. 7-8 2018, a force of Russian ‘little green men’ got too close to a US position in Syria. They were warned to keep their distance. They ignored the warning. They received a limited demonstration of combined arms combat in the 21st century. They didn’t enjoy it.
No, we aren’t scared of the Russians. If we should be worried about anything, it should be a candidate for President of the United States with shadowy business dealings with the Chinese Communist Party.
God also destroyed Israel for turning from Him.
Either of these young people could have, in their moments, contributed something constructive to the narrative. The highly charged atmosphere has, however, catapulted these pawns into the toxic cauldron of righteous progressive rage. Parental & societal malpractice abound.
It always helps to remember that half a century ago, the progressives of the early 1970s were counting on the tsunami of Baby Boomers who were reaching voting age, and the new constitutional amendment giving 18-20 year olds the vote, to turn America into the Socialist utopia the dreamed of, and today, the 2020 iterations of those same people can’t wait for those geezer Trump-supporting Boomers to die off, so that the vast sea of millennials and Gen Zers can turn America into the Socialist utopia they dream of.
Things do change, and we’ll find out in a few days if the left is going to get it’s way at the voting booth. But a Biden loss would be a rebuke to the current conventional wisdom about millenlials that unlike every other generation in the past, they’re not moving to the right as they get older. That was part of the larger theory formulated almost 20 years ago and which became mantra after Obama’s 2012 win, that changing demographics and the inherent leftism of the millennial generation had given the Democrats a Permanent Electoral College Majority.
The crony capitalist Dems thought merely nominating a ‘historic first’ candidate like Obama or Hillary would cause specific parts of their coalition to robotically support one of their own, while the far left believed their ideology was so dominant now, you didn’t even have to do that, and could nominate someone like Bernie. The result has been the struggle of the last two presidential primaries for the Democrats, and the situation now, where Biden is pushed as a moderate, but has to run either endorsing or paying ongoing lip service to the Sanders’ positions, because they think that’s what will get millennial and Gen Z voters to the polls.
Biden’s campaign rallies don’t seem to be bearing that out — if anyone was going to show up, it would be excited 40-and-unders with less fear of COVID — but we’ll see if that tepid support shows up at the polls.
The disease has been terminal throughout history. But we were new in a new way. Maybe we have a chance.
This makes me feel better about my daughters who, despite my best efforts, have swallowed the Woke Religion, hook, line, sinker and fishing pole.
I blame football. When this country was dominated by baseball brains, most people had enough mathematical skill to compute ERA, batting average, slugging percentage, and such like.
The NFL delenda est.
This sustains me! God will prevail! We need to act on our faith and trust in Him. This gets me through the day.
Dave, I love your articles. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Great article, Dave. Keep in mind, though, that when Charles Krauthammer was the age David Hogg currently is, Krauthammer was a Democrat. Just because a young person is on the left today doesn’t mean they are fixed there for life.
Good point. So there is a capacity for growth. At least one can hope that’s the case.
Great points. And thanks so much!
In the case of Hogg, I suspect his monetary and other compensation — he doesn’t get into Harvard unless he’s an angry progressive others think has PR benefits to their case — will keep him on the left. Krauthammer moved to the right from being a Mondale supporter pretty much under the radar, in that he was writing during his transition phase, but he wasn’t a celebrity prior to his transition phase. Hogg has nothing but his anger to promote himself, and would get Cindy Sheehan non-personed into obscurity if he ever shifted away from saying and doing what his benefactors want him to do.
Yeah, I don’t expect David Hogg himself will become conservative, but in this post he is being used as a symbol for his generation. And that’s what I’m talking about, that I think many people who are under 25 today and identify with the left may have a very different perspective at age 40. Right here on good old Ricochet I bet there are a lot of middle-aged and older people whose views have shifted rightward from where they were at age 20.
Agreed. When you’re working and have a family to take care of, a home to pay off, or retirement to fund, progressive policies that are both financially and socially destructive suddenly don’t seem like such great ideas anymore.
Great article, Dave! Thank you!!