Why Fournier Is Wrong & Millennials Won’t Rule This Millennia

Mandeville, LA – National Journal columnist Ron Fournier thinks the ObamaCare “shutdown” spells the end of the GOP, the status quo of the DNC and the rise of “millennials” but if Noah Webster were still alive, I imagine the caterwaul of four letter words he might use to describe the “millennial.” Time Magazine gave the “Me Me Me” generation a cover story last May and concluded. “They’re narcissistic. They’re lazy. They’re coddled. They’re even a bit delusional. Those aren’t just unfounded negative stereotypes about 80 million Americans born roughly between 1980 and 2000. They’re backed up by a decade of sociological research.” 1  Fournier can be forgiven for not reading Time that week but there is no contrition for elevating the millennials to the Madisonian heights of “revolutionary”.

“I concluded that their revolutionary view of government and politics points toward two possible outcomes. One is that they [millennials] might opt out of Washington, which leads us to some dark places. The second and more likely outcome is they will blow up Washington (“disruption” is the tech-inspired term they use), and build something better outside the current two-party dysfunction. Millennials don’t fit neatly into either the Democratic or Republican parties. They are highly empowered, impatient, and disgusted with politics today.”

There are at least two things wrong with this conclusion.

1. “Millennials” are a lazy, soul-less lot who believe putting in a hard days work begins with a kale shake and 2 hours of Grand Theft Auto IV followed by a “grueling” 1 hour commute aboard public transportation to an office job whose most challenging task is pretending to “work” for 3 hours until the whole-wheat-pita, lunch chime chirps across their smart phones. That this generation would even accept the awesome responsibility of reforming or even worse, designing a new government is as likely as Lindsay Lohan becoming its first Secretary of State. What exactly is “revolutionary” in the thinking that government serves the purpose of personal financier to support the activities listed above and the “student loans” that serve as its entry points? There’s a 19th century term for this: plunder and as Bastiat warned2 France has never recovered from it (not that they were admirable to begin with!).

“Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.
But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.” – Frederic Bastiat

2. Millennials have been “educated” by the generation created to shepherd in an American history that’s ahistorical, critical thinking that is only critical of the past and a creativity that’s only as animated as the software used to create “memes” used to dazzle their “social media” friends. Upon what history will this lot “build” the government of the future, the dystopian universes of “Fringe” or “The Walking Dead”? In short, this generation is as illiterate about how we got here than illiterates of the last century were about literacy. Fournier uses the musings of a millennial nanny to flesh out the coup de yewt.

“Michelle Diggles a senior policy adviser at the Democratic think-tank Third Way and an expert in demographics and generational politics. ‘Washington doesn’t get that change isn’t just a slogan. It’s about to become a reality… Neither party,’ she said, ‘gets what’s coming down the pike.’ What happens in Washington this month might make a Millennial Revolution all the more likely.”

A Millennial revolution to gainsay what precisely? A government by video game console? The capstone to the Millennial moment that is not to be, is their devotion to what does not deserve devotion. Their almost reverent defense of, indeed, embrace of aborting the generation that is to succeed them. Their defense of “marriage” as nothing more than a private contract that was illegitimately honored and practiced by “the religious” for nearly 8 preceding millenniums leaves me wondering what millennials will do when they get around to archaic acts like manners. Oh wait, we already know how that turns out, witness the lyrical serenades of “Jay-Z” and the oh-so lady-like sashay of one Miley Cyrus. (for those that say Miley is an exception, please explain the obscene popularity of “the twerk” prior to its most recent public display).

The truth is, as Irving Babbitt observed nearly 90 years ago, Americans have lost their spirit and their way, a way inspired by their faith in God and the worth of labor itself.

“One is inclined, indeed, to ask, in certain moods, whether the net result of the movement that has been sweeping the Occident for several generations may not be a huge mass of standardized mediocrity; and whether in this country in particular we are not in danger of producing in the name of democracy one of he most trifling brands of the human species that the world has yet see.”3

Borrowing a line from a prop on the set of the film Jurassic Park “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” is far more likely in our political future than rule by the arrogant, millennial brats who thought it would be great fun to revive the T-Rex to start with.

1. The Me Me Me Generation, Millennials: Time Magazine, 9 May, 2013 see: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2143001,00.html?pcd=pw-edit

2. Bastiat, Frederic., Law, The, 1850.

3. Babbitt, Irving. Democracy and Leadership, p. 269-70, 1924

TheKingDude

Host of the Mike Church Show on The Veritas Radio Network's CRUSADE Channel & Founder of the Veritas Radio Network. Formerly, of Sirius/XM's Patriot channel 125. The show began in March of 2003 exclusively on Sirius and remains "the longest running radio talk show in satellite radio history".

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