Youth As The Driving Force For Freedom And Democracy?
We often overlook the obvious in trying to understand events. Consider the sixties in America and the rise of youth power that started during the fifties as the boomers were catered to and pampered by Madison avenue. Buying power has great power, it is one of the reasons America today has moved more conservative, those boomers are now older, more secure, and less open to change and adventure. One wonders of the same impact in eighties Russia. New generations forget the issues of the past quickly, and history can become fantasy as some now make it in America.
America today has lost its youthful exuberance and the recent Republican Governor's stand against progress for tunnels and trains characterizes this loss of promise, the loss of the American spirit of 'can do.' Society grow or die from within, hopefully the latest idea that we 'can't do' because it will cost money and taxes dies or America dies.
So whereto the Middle East today. Time will tell and time will change emotions and feelings about what just happened. We can hope for positive change. "Historical precedent gives reason to hope. Following similar youth-driven political and economic tumult in the 80s, Latin America emerged with relatively stable democratic, free-market institutions. If we lose this generation and the human capital they represent, we lose a historic gift, an opportunity to transform a potentially explosive international security threat into a regional economic partner." Read article here.
"For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid sixties, had only ever known the world of improving life chances, generous medical and educational services, optimistic prospects of a upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual." Tony Judt 'Ill Fares the Land'
America today has lost its youthful exuberance and the recent Republican Governor's stand against progress for tunnels and trains characterizes this loss of promise, the loss of the American spirit of 'can do.' Society grow or die from within, hopefully the latest idea that we 'can't do' because it will cost money and taxes dies or America dies.
So whereto the Middle East today. Time will tell and time will change emotions and feelings about what just happened. We can hope for positive change. "Historical precedent gives reason to hope. Following similar youth-driven political and economic tumult in the 80s, Latin America emerged with relatively stable democratic, free-market institutions. If we lose this generation and the human capital they represent, we lose a historic gift, an opportunity to transform a potentially explosive international security threat into a regional economic partner." Read article here.
"For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid sixties, had only ever known the world of improving life chances, generous medical and educational services, optimistic prospects of a upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual." Tony Judt 'Ill Fares the Land'
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