Conundrum of the Youth Vote

Share

This morning, Michelle Obama will hold a rally on the campus of the University where I work, and the students, as they have for all other Obamaesque events will turn out in droves. When they watched the debate, almost everyone there planned to vote for him regardless of what was said at the debate. They follow blindly a man who incites emotion, putting fervor over character in terms of relative value. They have no idea that in politics, like in everything else during youth, in “raging against the machine” they simply become cogs therein.

Young people reject authority, yet they listen to the pundits. Almost all the comedy shows, talk show hosts, celebrities, etc., endorse Obama for president. Young people chant the cry of change. Yet, in politics like in their dress, their music, etc., in rejecting the authority of their elders, they become subject to another authority. They decry capitalistic business ventures while they shop at the Gap and Hollister and buy things based on popularity over substance for fear of appearing outside the group.

What they really reject is wisdom and character. They don’t want to be uncool like their parents. They think they know better. So, they turn on what has kept the country afloat and try to build rafts out of rocks, trying out ideas doomed to failure from the point of conceptualization. For fear of the same old thing, they try reinventing the wheel and waste their energies on gasps of air and empty phraseology. Just because an idea is old doesn’t mean it is bad.

Vote for liberty. If you really want to continue to drive your cars, wear your clothes, enjoy your friends and live the lives you currently enjoy, you must vote for liberty. The government that governs best governs least, and so the candidates who promise the most autonomy and freedom are preferable for everyone as a whole than those who malign government’s limited role with promises and pandering. Change in and of itself is not a good thing. Freedom, on the other hand, always is. Just ask a released felon.

Young people ironically really desire independence. They don’t want to be told what to do, but Obama’s administration will tell them what they must do and will do, enforcing it with the truncheon when necessary. Where once they have freedom of choice coupled to consequence, Obama promises censors and systems of surveillance that coerce conformity. Whereas now their sameness in dress, music, grooming, etc. remains an issue of choice, under Obama’s authoritarian regime, it will become compulsory. I call upon the Youth who vote to reject the authoritarianism that is Obama. He is not bright and new and clean. He is himself an old man, but unlike the rest of your elders he does not endorse this plan for your good, it is for his own.