Posted on 07/14/2009 6:48:30 AM PDT by steve-b
Next month, as the class of 2013 moves into the dorms, Wisconsin's Beloit College will release its annual "Mindset List." The list is that much-forwarded email that always makes you feel old--the one that includes horrifying factoids like, "for today's college freshmen, GPS navigation systems have always been available," and, "there has always been Pearl Jam."
More horrifying still, soon they'll all be able to vote.
The generation born from the late 1970s to the early '90s has been called "Gen Y," "GenNext," and "the Millennials." Its name is Legion. But whatever name they go by, and despite their image as web-savvy individualists, when it comes to politics, young voters are as collectivist as they come.
In May, the Center for American Progress released a lengthy survey of polling data on Millennials, concluding that they're a "Progressive Generation," eager to increase federal power.
CAP is the leading Democratic think tank, so it has a vested interest in that conclusion. But they're on to something. In the last election, 18-to-29 year-olds went for Barack Obama by a 34-point margin.
The CAP report shows that Gen Y is substantially more likely to support universal health care, labor unions, and education spending than older voters. And other surveys support CAP's "Progressive Generation" thesis.
In 2008, the nonpartisan National Election Study asked Americans whether "the free market" or "a strong government" would better handle "today's complex economic problems." By a margin of 78 to 22 percent, Millennials opted for "strong government."
Kids today are a credulous bunch. The 2007 Pew Political Values survey revealed "a generation gap in cynicism." Where 62 percent of Americans overall view the federal government as wasteful and inefficient, just 42 percent of young people agree.
No wonder, then, that GenNext responds to President Obama's call for "public service," roughly translated as "a federal paycheck."
Here, they differ dramatically from their skeptical "Generation X" predecessors. A 1999 survey asked Gen X college seniors to name their ideal employers; they "filled the entire list with for-profit businesses like Microsoft and Cisco." What a difference a generation makes. In the same poll today, Gen Y prefers the State Department, Teach for America, and the Peace Corps. That's a problem for a country built on the entrepreneurial spirit.
What lessons can the GOP, nominally the party of limited government, learn from all this?
First, by staking so much of their electoral success on "social issues" voters, Republicans have lashed themselves to a sinking demographic. At 16 percent of voters currently, Millennials will grow to nearly 40 percent of the electorate by 2020--and they couldn't care less about the "culture wars."
Young voters are twice as likely as older ones to support gay marriage. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, of all people, has the sensible political position here: Conservatives ought to give up on marriage amendments, letting the issue get sorted out on "a state-by-state basis."
Second, given the rising strength of younger voters, beating the war drum isn't the way forward for the GOP: "Millennials have generally been the age group most hostile to the war in Iraq," CAP reports, and they're less likely than their elders to embrace a militarized war on terror.
Republicans can compromise on these issues without violating any principle that's essential to conservatism. But Millennials' romantic view of federal activism presents a more serious challenge to small-government conservatives. Luckily, this may be a problem that will work itself out on its own.
David Brooks, every liberal's favorite conservative, argues that the old Reagan-Goldwater antigovernment spirit made sense once, but today it's an anachronism. When this generation was but a gleam in its parents' eyes, Brooks points out, tax rates were 70 percent, inflation was rampant, and "the capitalist world was headed to a Swedish welfare model."
Oddly enough, that sounds like the world young voters will be facing very soon, as the Baby Boomers retire, and our wealth-destroying Social Security system forces every two Millennials to carry one aging hippie on their backs.
The rising generation is about to get a hard lesson in the costs of activist government. Before long, they may start to see the wisdom in Reagan's aphorism that "government is not the solution to our problems: government is the problem."
Uh, not all scientists who are conservative are creationists, I know I am not. Most scientists are employed by general industry, so that kind of shoots your grants from the government thing. The fact is that "Political Correctness" meant enforcing more than just word games, it meant enforcing what it promised "Liberals Only" in the Academic club, and thus they teach the students who are then the leaders of tomorrow while the conservatives happily pay the taxes to support the universities being turned into re-education camps.
A good article on this is found at the Christian Science Monitor right now Nearly all my professors are Democrats. Isn't that a problem?
Come to new york city. WE are full of young, highly taxed professionals who are insipid leftists.
So my firm, which is broadly involved in the tech/internet space has decided that it will avoid hiring Millenials at all costs. Unless they were home schooled, or are foreign-born. We actually have hired two 50-something "dinosaur" COBOL programmers who we taught SQL Server and database schema design to. And guess what? They have both become masters of the trade. Flawless database design. and they are self-teaching. they learn new skills as needed without complaint, or special handling or training required by the Millenials we've hired (and fired or lost) in the past. And these guys are loyal. They are old school engineers who want to work with others in the office to improve processes and make them more efficient. I never expected this from them, but it is typical of their generations. With the Millenials you were lucky to get good performance out of their narrow sphere of responsiblity. Having them think of others or the well-being of the company is a fantasy. they are selfish and care only about themselves.
I know I am painting with a broad brush here. Many of you may tell me about your Millenial child who isnt like this. but i am not alone. Read this piece from the WSJ to see how much so...
This should tell you something about Ron Paul. The "kids" who were impressed with Paul mainly only liked him because he was against the Iraq war.
The article seems to be based on the idea that “millenials” will remain forever as stupid as they are right now. One would hope that a few years experience would teach people a few things about how the world really works.
Er, why should they have "loyalty" to you if someone makes them a better offer? The workplace is for making a living; it's not your family. There's no reason employees shouldn't seek the best deal for themselves, just like any rational person does.
Would that it were true. Alas, too many engineers have been sucked in to the toeing the "party line" this is what group think does.
But, not so long ago, and for many years I believed in CO2 as a cause of Global Warming. It wasn't until I started reading about the realities of the Sun being primarily responsible for our Climate that only have become available recently, that I switched. I was shocked when so many scientists continued to cling to bad theory but this was just when Al Gore was doing his thing. Since then, it hasn't been a question of science but a question of belief and politics that has sustained this Hoax long after it should have gone the way of the Piltdown Man.
Anyway, I refer you to another link at FR Survey Shows Gap Between Scientists and the Public
That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about them leaving TWO WEEKS after training. We paid to train 2 Millenials for absolutely nothing. And we heard one of them did the same thing to the next employer and now works for MassPIRG, a left-wing agitator group. She left with no notice to go to the Obama inuagural and never came back. He was left in the lurch 2 days before a huge presentation. She probably couldn't care less. Some of these Millenials are malignant narcissists and outright sociopaths.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
Groupthink.
The Trustafarian Hipsters in Williamsburg are even worse.
I doubt that a majority of these youngsters even knows what a free market is.
Ask these youngsters the same questions in a few months, when Obama’s destruction of the US economy is complete and civilization as we know it has collapsed into a dark age existence.
That will change over the next few years when many hve to drop out because Mom and Dad are unemployed now and can’t pay their tution. They can’t find jobs upon graduation and start to put two and teo together. It happened to alot of the wide eyed liberals in 1980 when they voted for Reagan.
Now you know how I feel being called a boomer! I am in my 40’s and boomers are in their 60’s!
“Parents are not paying attention, and the GOP doesn’t bother to educate Americans about the downside of statism, in part, because many, if not most, of them are statists themselves.”
I’m paying attention. I have three boys, the oldest of whom is 10, and they know what’s right.
They know that government is bad. More government is worse.
Yes, well, we’re the exception here at FR, I’d hope. :-)
My kids are homeschooled, and are learning about real American history.
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