A good overview for sure. I won’t disagree with any particular part but only offer a comment or two without doing a lot of indepth thinking about it.
I believe that for many individuals idealism, political outlook and overall risk taking changes with maturity. I believe that youth has its place as that is the time for really exploring and developing your foundation to which you anchor around the rest of your life. Also I think that as one ages to some degree the comfort level for change becomes smaller and therefore one pulls back or isn’t pushing the envelope.
I don’t see the level of support for say a Paul that maybe you see. In 08 in his home state of Texas he received just over 4.8% of the primary vote. Now this is a Texan and well known politician that won just about every online straw poll conducted. Now that tells me that a small percentage of hard core, pushing the envelope types can impact something like a poll but when it comes down to finding the warm bodies at the polling place on election day pulling the lever they can’t be found in large numbers. Their idealism doesn’t translate into votes.
They do make waves and some of the waves stir up debate and that’s not all bad.
Take care.
Despite his failure to articulate the specific foreign policy most find palatable, on domestic issues and the Constitution, Paul does have an appeal.
He has been thoroughly Alinskied by people on both sides of the aisle as a "nutcase", but that is over an assertion of Constitutional constraints even many who consider themselves 'conservative' find unpalatable. Everyone has their pet programs, or so it seems.However, those Constitutionalist positions are finding resonance with younger people, who are going to have to pay the tab for the extra-Constitutional excesses of the past, one way or another.
Keep in mind we are dealing with a young group of conservative-leaning people who see what hoops their parents have to jump through to start or run a business, hear them griping at tax time, and see the inherent unfairness in all the Federal edicts supposedly designed to make things "fair". They are young, but are getting fed up.
Now, I'm a great-grandpa, and they talk with me, and I with them. It hasn't been that long ago that I was younger, with the world as my oyster, ready to write my own ticket. My idealism ran head-on into the brick wall of reality, too, about the same time my karma ran over my dogma.
To say, "Their idealism doesn’t translate into votes." isn't completely accurate. It can, but they want something or someone to vote for.
I can understand that.
I have, since I started voting, cast my vote on Presidential ballots against someone by voting for the person most likely to beat them, not overwhelmingly for any candidate, except as someone to beat that other less qualified candidate.
The lesser of two evils has, predictably, brought evil, just at a slower pace.
Now, there are other young 'idealists' out there, misguided, mistaken, or unmugged, and they are actively courted by the other side--and roundly encouraged by the other side to vote.
If Conservatives would mentor the young Libertarians, leaving the labels out of it and working merely on basic beliefs, I think their votes would be counted, too.
But we aren't going to attract that vote with more of the same-ol'-same-ol' RINO crap, even to defeat the Democrats and the Socialists, because idealists are looking for someone they can vote for.
Until and unless a Conservative candidate is up there, embracing policy changes which will put a fire in their young bellies, they just see more of the crap that got us where we are, and no reason to get off the couch.
The GOP is getting there, but despite a good defense, it is still prone to fumbling the ball in the fourth quarter.
We need candidates who are Conservative, who have the guts to articulate positions the press will attack. Because if it is Right, the press will attack it. If we cannot speak the truth, if we cannot advocate what is right, we will have to either fight for it in bloodier ways or we will have to submit to the tyranny so many have fought against.
So, where are they? Where are the candidates who will embrace the clear contrast to Washington Politics as we have known it in our lifetimes?
Unless and until they appear on the scene, or pragmatism rears its ugly head, our youth will continue to feel the futility in the process and fail to vote.
Revolutions are carried out by young people over ideals, all they need is a rallying point, a person to rally around, and a set of core beliefs to unite them.
Conservatives can do that, but not if we are busy decrying libertarians as "kooks" and wasting what could have been productive dialogue with blatant and often unjustifiable hostility.
As for some of the more 'far out' beliefs, those to me are just a sympton of the inherent distrust some people have in the Government, something which I can not say the Government has not earned.
It is the candidates who buck the status quo who will have the best chances.