This post originally appeared at BitsBlog.

I remember the first time that I was aware of Rush Limbaugh.

This was before his television program, even. At the time, he was just starting his talk show… the very first day, I caught the show. At the time, there wasn’t very many stations, (particularly the big guns) that were willing to take a chance on him. The one that did in my area was a little 500 watt day-timer then on 1030, WYSL. (The place has since moved to 1040, and grown into a 20,000 w powerhouse.)

It didn’t take long though, for Rush to be moved from the little rimshotters to just about every 50,000 watt talker in the nation.

And so he went on to be at the top of that game for three decades…nobody in the history of radio has ever held that level of popularity for as long as Rush Limbaugh did.

The reason for that popularity he explained himself, suggesting that what he did was say what people were already thinking… Giving voice to conservatism in a way that certainly nobody else had ever done before. Not only was he unabashedly conservative, but he had a good time doing it.

It is absolutely impossible to overstate the impact Rush Limbaugh had on AM talk stations of the day, and in turn, on politics in America… which, again in turn, is why everyone to the right of Fidel Castro hated him with a passionate hate which also cannot be over emphasized.

The left tried emulating him, they even set up their own talk networks, trying desperately to capitalize on his formula. Well, of course, leaving out the most obvious element in his success… he was an actual conservative. As such, every one of those efforts failed miserably after only a couple of years, or in some cases as little as a couple of shows. Even leftist friends had to admit that he had a style that was attractive to any listener. All but the most fingers -in -the -ears liberal had difficulty arguing against any point that he made over the years.

Aside from the left, there were a large but dwindling number of GOP establishment types who tried to get Limbaugh fired, Limbaugh taken off the air, etc but to no avail. At the end of the day he was more popular and more persuasive than his opponents.

Rush Limbaugh was given the medal of freedom by President Donald Trump, an award which he richly deserved… and when you look at his face in the tapes of the State of the Union address that evening, you can see he genuinely appreciated the gesture.

And, yeah, I have to say that since I spent a number of years behind the microphone and understand the attraction of that lifestyle, that profession, him getting that award met a lot to me personally on an emotional level. But, of greater import than this, he has served his country well.

As it happens I wasn’t listening when his wife came on the radio program to announce his passing, a job which I wouldn’t wish on anyone but according to everyone I’ve spoken with she handled it well.

The tributes are now coming in like wildfire, and I suppose there’s no real point in linking to them all since you will doubtless find them on your own along with the usual hate messages that anybody who dares to be conservative will get,regardless of the circumstance. No point in dwelling on them. No class, anyway.

What happens now, with the movement that he started? Time, I suppose, will answer that one. But make no mistake, it is a movement and the movement remains. On that basis alone, Rush Limbaugh deserves a salute from every one of us.

After the massacre in Orlando, it’s finally time for a defenseless community to arm itself.  And the help that the LGBT community is getting makes you wonder why so many idiots on the left just automatically bark that conservatives, especially conservative Christians “hate” the community.  It is an unfair generalization, as proved by the story above and an earlier one regarding an Orlando Chick-fil-a that opened uncharacteristically on Sunday to feed blood donors supporting those injured in the shooting.

Related to Orlando, Iowa’s Shane Vander Hart nails it again by calmly explaining to the US Attorney General that she is, well, at best an unconvincing tool, at worst, a lying snake.

Thankfully, Democrats in the US House stopped sitting on their, um, derrières today.  But it always makes me nervous when they do get back to work.

Apparently, Hillary Clinton’s campaign needs financial help… so she is selling a pantsuit-tee on her website now.  Seriously.

You’ve probably already heard, but just in case, the President’s Executive Amnesty program was snuffed out by a split SCOTUS vote.

By the time you read this, we should know whether we have a Brexit or Bremain.  Frankly, I think any country that’s being forced to unload its sovereignty to finance the weakest links (such as Greece) and to take in thousands of terrorists in refugee clothing should seriously look at leaving the institution that is foisting such ideas on them… which should give us pause as we here in the colonies remain in the UN.

Oh, and if you were a fan of Ben Carson, this might give you pause.

And for what it’s worth, here’s today’s extreme PC for the day.  I don’t even know what to say.

Many of us, I believe, do not spend this day contemplating the things that this day is meant to make us think about.  For most of us, this is a day off of work, an opportunity to spend time with our families, to hold a picnic or just do nothing because, well, there’s nothing for us to do.  Basically, we enjoy to the fullest the very freedom that others have worked so hard to secure for us, without a whimper of acknowledgement of the price paid for our present joy.

Meanwhile, today is just another day of empty activity for families whose loved ones are on active duty somewhere around the world.  Or enduring the pain of knowing that someone is not coming home, ever.  There are people who have come home, have not died, but are enduring the struggle of injuries, lost limbs, PTSD, the struggle of regaining the important relationships in their lives only to find them crushed under the weight of any number of stresses caused by their experience, or the loss of employment.

I am no fan of war, but there are times when it is necessary.  I appreciate and admire the incredible love of those who think I and other like me are important enough to die for.  We must never forget the risk and sacrifices faced by our brothers and sisters who have and still do serve our country in the armed services.  Since 1775, the willingness to stand in harms way and die for the love of others and the spirit of our nation has been the hallmark of those who protect us from evil.  Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, (and we should add Police and Fire Protection) all stand in the gap so that the rest of us may live in peace and freedom.

I don’t expect the words I share to press you or anyone to disband the joys of today… they are hardly adequate to such a task, and to some extent, we do need to enjoy the good things that others have made possible for us, or else they have sacrificed in vain.  But I urge you to stop, thank God for incredible good he has given us through the selflessness of others, and pray for those who need encouragement today.

This video is President Reagan’s remarks at the 1984 Memorial Day Ceremony and Funeral for the Vietnam Unknown Soldier.  Take the time to watch this.

Text of the remarks are found here: http://buff.ly/1WSLau7

First,  let me say that the USSC’s recent (non-)decision was the correct and logical one, if the only issue was the law and the wording within the Constitution. The choice, you see,  was made the moment government made being married a legal matter, hundreds of years ago. That said, however, there are larger things at work, here.

One of the advantages of having a huge library of previous writings on file, is the ability to refer back to those writings and those positions. Saves much in the way of repetitive writing and also, gives you a checkpoint on your own consistency. Back in 2004, I wrote a comment over at Dan Drezner’s place, which addresses some of the issues aside from the law, and the Constitution.

“‘A prohibition on homosexual unions wasn’t written into the constitution because such things were assumed, and therefore never legally defined.

Proof of these assumptions is easy enough to find.
It is interesting for example, that Jefferson, (arguably the biggest social liberal of the lot) thought homosexual acts to be worthy of hanging… (I commend Fawn Brodie’s Jefferson to your reading list) and yet he never indicated anything of the sort in his … our… documents.

Clearly, there was some assumptions made on the part of the founders in this area…. cultural assumptions.

And here, we walk a legal fine line, I fear.

Government, you see, does not operate inside a cultural vacuum. Rather, it exists inside a cultural context it must not run afoul of, lest it become irrelevant to the people it’s supposed to be governing. Yet, while law and government is a more exact science, culture is less so. And so, codification of the culture is problematic at best.

Given this, Jefferson, and the rest of the founders apparently took the attitude that their best tack would be to write laws and a framework that would at least not run afoul of the existing culture, without specifying without attempting to codify the bounds of that culture.

Dan, I think, is right insofar as such an amendment not passing, because it, unlike the remainder of the constitution, it attempts to define the social boundaries of the culture it’s charged with governing.

But I wonder what it is then, that the culture has to protect itself, in the end, if not government.’

This is, it seems to me, the legal vs the cultural. And clearly the founders were making choices based on cultural assumptions. This is today resulting in questions such as Holman W. Jenkins Jr, in the WSJ asks

“If marriage is a mere “legal” right, who can’t get married? If any two people have the right to the legal benefits of marriage, why not three people? Why not two brothers? Why not a man and his father?

It’s hard to see on what basis marriage could logically be denied to anybody. Right now, the state doesn’t ask if a man and woman are heterosexually inclined, if they love each other, if they intend to have children. Marriage largely regulates itself, with the exception being government efforts to prevent marriages intended solely to obtain a green card. But in the world ordained by the Massachusetts supreme court, wouldn’t the state be obliged to make sure two women who want to get married are really lesbians and not just two women trying to acquire the legal advantages of marriage? How else to stop marriage from becoming a right available to any group of people who simply want to organize their affairs as “married” persons?

Right now, the law makes no formal presumption about the sexual orientation of people getting married, just their gender: They have to be of opposite sexes. Yet that small stipulation seems to have succeeded, for the most part, in keeping marriage from becoming a mere contractual convenience. ”

I’ve already written at some length about all of this, incidental to the Canadian SC ruling last June.(02)

The problem is a bit more basic, even than a religious question in our increasingly secular society. At it’s root, this is a matter of which will triumph… law and government, or the culture that created said law and said government. Like it or not, the values being railed against by those seeking to install this travesty, are not simply religious values. They are also deep in the roots of our culture. The implications are simple enough to see, then…

Clearly, what we have here as the result of this ruling are more questions than answers. I say again, the issue is what triumphs, government, or the culture that gave it life? Has the monster created to protect the culture, turned on it’s master?

I suggest it has, and it’s because we have entrusted the power of government to those who don’t believe in traditional American culture, who are using the power of government to over-ride and debase that culture. And that is a theme which will continue to pop up in posts I already have in the pipeline.

Detroit was the place that epitomized the whole “American Dream” sales pitch, where anybody could scrape up a second chance and win a decent living for yourself and your family. The landless, the uneducated, the minor hooligans, and even people so stupid that they wasted their youthful years chasing graduate degrees could get a fresh start in work that mattered and be rewarded their efforts. Detroit got there first.

It ended long ago, but a car can still roll on for a while after engine cuts out. It is now grinding to a halt; the final halt.

All the World’s an Unfunded Liability

Almost 40 percent of Detroit’s operating budget goes to debt service and legacy costs, and in the wake of the bankruptcy we all got a peak at the debt being carried by the city, approximating:

• $3 billion in general obligation bonds
• $6 billion in water and sewage bonds (asset-backed, they will still get paid)
• $3.5 billion in unfunded pension
• $5.7 billion in unfunded retiree healthcare costs

It has been an old trick in politics to keep the peace with municipal workers by buying them off with pensions in the future instead of pay raises in the present. Detroit may be the first big city to hit the wall, but cities across the country have borrowed too much even as legacy costs grew out of hand. One of these cities rhymes with Rickago.

Urban Development

Urban redevelopment bonds are almost always rated lower than general obligations. This is because urban redevelopment is usually an effort by amateur politicians to play urban planner in areas of town that have fallen into disuse. Seriously, check them yourself.

It is a perennially unlearned lesson in the political mind; communities and economies have more in common with the organic than the mechanical. When force is applied to make them behave as central authorities which they would, they are more likely to fold completely than comply.

It is a lesson available on display at every suburban “walk-able community” development – designed to be trendy, now sitting empty.

It was on display in Detroit when the neighborhood of “Poletown” was grabbed using eminent domain and handed to GM. Poletown Neighborhood Council v. Detroit became a landmark case in land use law. Decades later the nation was treated to similar treatment in the infamous Kelo decision, but Detroit got there first.

Greet the Future

Too much debt, unfunded legacy costs, aggressive state corporatist cronyism, a lack of jobs. This stands in no stark contrast to the debt, unfunded social security and Medicare liabilities, the subsidies for favored pseudo-industries and ongoing poor employment situation on the national level.

The country still has a few things going for it; while we buy consumer and durable goods from China at bankrupting pace, we are able to export to them agricultural produce, medical supplies, heavy machinery – I am even told that it is quite possible to get work in manufacturing this heavy equipment depending on where you are – and scrap metal.

Actually, if you are a train watcher you might even catch a shipment of Detroit scrap passing by on its way to be made into rebar, which will be used in China to build cities that nobody will inhabit.

Bankruptcy 101

The legal formalities of bankruptcy aside, in economic terms bankruptcy is the transfer of assets from the title owners to the creditors. So the Chinese will purchase our companies, the products of our land, and the remnants of our cities. Having stored our currency in reserve, they are our creditors – and that is the way of things.

Detroit will be dismantled. The bond holders, pensioners, and employees will all take a hit. The residents will continue to leave. The city owns much land, and perhaps that can be given in kind, but land in Detroit is not the asset it once was, and even after the debts have been settled and the screws have been screwed – even then – there might not be a way back.

Detroit cannot be contained; Detroit has been the vanguard of change in American society since the first Model T. It defined the industrial age and middle class consumer taste; then, it defined economic degradation, debt, and the welfare state. This crisis belongs to all of us – Detroit got there first – and second chances are hard to come by these days.

Here is the gist; the Bretton Woods Conference made the dollar the reserve currency of the world, it was gold-based until 1971 when Nixon decided to let it float free, allowing the US to run endless trade deficits with mercantilist, export-led industrializing countries in East Asia. Along the way, the US ran up an enormous government debt – selling bonds to the East Asian economies that were gradually undermining American industry – to expand the welfare state, fight a half-dozen wars, fund some peanut farmer’s idea of Synfuels, wind power, weapons systems that weren’t even used in the half-dozen wars, and what Stockman refers to as the HES – Healthcare, Education, and Social Services employment sectors – government jobs funding the consumers of Chinese goods.

Calling the Federal Reserve a “Bubble Machine,” Stockman digs into their low-interest rate policies and attempts to fine-tune capital allocation through the Tech Bubble, the Housing Bubble, and the Government Bubble that is, according to Stockman, about to pop.

I see no reason to doubt Stockman’s basic assertions; the stock market is playing with new highs even as the labor participation rate slips – only about 47 percent of adult Americans have full time jobs – and a full 100 million Americans receive some kind of food aid from the federal government.

What remains of American prosperity is Crony Capitalism in Stockman’s terms, where politically-connected operators get all the benefits of cheap money from the Fed, tax breaks only they can claim, and bailouts when things go bad; and the bulk of the people get nothing, not even jobs.

There is no escape, either. Stockman doesn’t hold back regarding Social Security, Medicare, the massive debt already on the books, and the massive tax hikes that will be required to keep the grist mill turning, assuming the next generation of tax oxen can even earn income – and Stockman doesn’t seem to think that they will.

The stunning loss of what he calls “Breadwinner Jobs,” which are jobs that actually pay the bills, has gone hand-in-hand with the loss of sound money and the growth of the welfare state.

The middle classes have been the main patrons of sectors ranging from real estate, insurance, retail, and even my field, the law. The nobility of Europe could commission artists for grand portraits and sculptures, but it took a growing bourgeois class with the money to buy houses worth decorating to spur the great easel painters of the Dutch Golden Age or the salons of 19th Century Paris. From art to coffee, the principle is inescapable; the indulgences might exist in some form regardless, but their proliferation takes middle class aspiration.

I think that our middle class is in trouble; Stockman believes this, too. With bills that we cannot pay, debts we cannot service, interest rates that cannot stay low forever, a large population of labor rendered unemployable by circumstances, and no indications of growth beyond the rather disturbing rise in the number of coffee shops around the Des Moines Metro area – patronized by students and a handful of investors who “feel wealthier” because the Dow is up – then the next meltdown will be far worse.

Do you deny that the middle class is shrinking? I have an exercise for you – right now, get in your car and take a drive through the nearest urban area. Count the number of times you see the following scene:

A super-discount retailer (Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, etc…) sharing a parking lot with a payday loan outlet, and a bucket-shop tax preparation shop (they specialize in helping low-income people claim the Earned Income Tax Credit) and some sort of no-frills dining. Depending on where you are, you might even see a blood plasma collection company and in the near vicinity there will be a “buy here pay here” auto lot, where used cars are sold on credit to people who cannot get formal bank loans.

Hardly the commercial trappings of a wealthy economy.

I say intentional because I didn’t want to spoil yesterday’s festivities with the rant you are about to endure.

For over two hundred years we have celebrated the day that the Second Continental Congress finally agreed to tell King George that enough was enough, and that we (the 13 British colonies in North America) were ready to form an independent government and discontinue the disproportionate transfer of resources back to the motherland.

This came from men who were themselves fiercely independent. They could not have imagined running their businesses, their homes, their very lives under the direction and scrutiny of anyone other than themselves. This came from a spirit spawned in freshly opening new territory, a new world, with limited help from the “mother country”. Truly many had come specifically to get away from religious and other forms of tyrany. The men who met in Philadelphia in 1776 were prepared to sacrifice everything to ensure a future of Freedom and Independence for their families instead of the growing limits on their personal and corporate freedoms.

It’s interesting that we call July 4 “Independence Day”, and furthermore, that the Congress titled their pronouncement the Declaration of Independence instead of the Declaration of Freedoms, or Declaration of Rights, or Declaration of Kicking the King’s Butt Out of America. You’ll note that I used Freedom and Independence in the same sentence in the prior paragraph as if the two words were different. Well, they are, and yet…

To be independent means to be able to operate without having resources or any assistance provided by others, or to eschew being tied to any others in a way that would constrain one’s actions, priorities, relationships, public positions, etc. Independent candidates for public office reject affiliation with political parties. Independent voters do not declare afflication with either of the two major political parties. Independent insurance agents are not tied to a single insurance company, but represent multiple possible companies’ products to their customers. Those who are truly independent set their own values, make their own rules, and are beholden to no one else’s whims in their business, politics, or their lives.

To be Free, as we typically assign meaning to the word, means that we are able to carry out our lives in whatever ways we think are proper. We decide who we associate with, what activity we carry out at any given time, whether we will vote or not, whether we will learn to drive, or take the bus, get a job or live on someone else’s kindness. Free people can say what they like without being silenced by others, eat what they like, spend money on what they want or chose not to buy something. Those who are Free can donate their time, finances or other resources to the needs of those they think are most deserving of them, or to no one at all. Typically, freedom is associated with a set of rights that we believe everyone deserves and that no one should be able to restrict, whether an individual or society as a whole.

Just as the Civil War of the United States was about much more than slavery, the Revolutionary War was about much more than taxation. Both of these wars were driven by the rights of individuals and the rights of larger groups within society, from the pressure of those that held leadership at a “higher” level. They were both about a way of life.

Richard Henry Lee brought this proclamation, in part, from the Virginia House of Commons to the Second Continental Congress: “These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.

The amazing thing about these two words is that while they are different, it seems horribly inadequate to consider one without the other.

Can one truly be Free while dependent on another? For instance, if I borrow $10,000, I am obligated to repay this to the lender, and as such, I have instantly made myself dependent upon the lender. My priorities, my actions, my way of thinking is strongly influenced by this debt. I cannot say that I am independent as long as I am obligated to repay this debt. Similarly, am I free? The debtor is going to want this money back. If the debter thinks that I am not going to repay (perhaps I’ve missed several payments), he is obliged to put liens on my resources, and to perhaps take some of my posessions to cover the debt. My right to hold my property is essentially given over to the debtor when I borrow the money in the first place… I am not free, even if I have choices, essentially my rights are now limited because of my debt.

Similarly, those who are dependent on others for day-to-day sustenance, shelter, and medical care, are not free, not independent. This is true on an individual level, or on a corporate level. For example, just about every school district across the country receives financial assistance from their state and the federal government. Regardless of need. There may have been a time when only those school districts with a real lack of funding because of economic hardship were provided funding from the larger pools of citizens (states or federal). But eventually, that was deemed “unfair”, leading to formulae for deciding how much money every school district receives, because the state or federal governments believed they knew what every student needed for a proper education, and they wanted to make sure that there was enough money everywhere. We won’t get into the waste of this philosphy today, but the burden of dependence is weighed on every public school district regardless of local ability to finance the schools. As a result, as a penalty for being dependent, all of these districts are obligated to conform to standards and tests from both state and federal agencies. Even if they make no sense. Even if they don’t help improve shortcomings in the schools. Even if the parents want somethings more or less.

The same can be said for those who are on welfare, public and private colleges that accept federal funding, for those who believe only the police and military are capable of protecting our properties and our lives, and for those now who believe that everyone needs what the government thinks is good healthcare. States are often saddled with constraints tied to federal funding. An example from several years ago was the requirement that states limit their posted highway speeds to 55 miles per hour in exchange for receiving federal highway money.

Is dependence wrong? Not always. If it is truly your choice to borrow money, or to accept gifts with strings attached, that can be your decision… you certainly have the right to limit your own freedoms, and you should be responsible for knowing what you are doing. And somtimes dependence occurs as the result of circumstance (although, you may have choices to prevent the circumstances from becoming chronic). But dependence that is forced upon you by others, that should be rejected and frankly should be a right equal to freedom of speech and bearing arms. Everyone should have the right to lose their property, their freedom of movement, their very lives if they so chose, without others intervening as if they own you or your life. But we have become consumed with the idea that we are so responsible for each other as a society that anyone who loses anything is suddenly a ward of the state, and as such, a serf as well.

We have so many dependencies in our lives, so many limits on our freedoms, that the goals behind what those men did 237 years ago seem light years away in comparison. I would challenge you to find one enumerated right of individuals in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights that isn’t somehow constrained by laws or court decisions. Frankly, we take our rights for granted, and the more we do, the closer we come to losing them completely.

So, it is ironic that we celebrate Independence Day when we lack that which we celebrate, and are moving toward stripping away more of our independence and freedoms. While we still have the day off, with barbeques, parades, and fireworks, this day should be about so much more. More of what a free people should truly be, and what their government should not be. But as long as we allow ourselves to be serfs to our government, we are not free.

Image: © gstudio – Fotolia.com

Of course he was referring to disgraced Republican Governor Mark Sanford completing his political comeback by beating Colbert’s sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch (54% to 45%) on Tuesday night.  Sanford’s victory came despite him being less than four years removed from weaving a web of lies that included cheating on his wife and leaving the country during his term as governor to be with his mistress.

What were they thinking?

The only justification for voting en mass for such a man was that palmetto Republicans didn’t at all like Ms. Colbert Bush.  I’m not saying I blame them since even though she tried to run as a moderate, she was a terrible candidate and was clearly anything but (think Christie Vilsack).  Having said that there is no way Sanford should have had the support to win this seat, and this result puts a temporary nationwide stain on Republicans.

While voting for someone who has been unfaithful to their spouse is bad enough—Louisiana Senator David Vitter comes to mind—Sanford’s situation was even worse.  Not only did he cheat on and lie to his wife, he abandoned his state entirely by actually leaving the country while on the job.  Either of these should disqualify him from being in Congress, let alone a combination of both of them at once.

Ideally this situation should have been taken care of before the general election in the 16 way Republican primary that Sanford placed first in.  At this time there was no “lesser of two evils” dynamic for Republican voters.  It’s inconceivable that another Republican in the district wasn’t more qualified to forward Republican principles than this guy. Even if Sanford was the only candidate who could win the general election, on principle Republicans in the state should have lost this House seat and been proud of doing so.  The truth is right now this seat isn’t at all crucial, and they very likely would have won it back in two years anyway.  It would have been a far more reasonable alternative to this shameful outcome.

This Trend Much End

How can the Republican Party stand on such high-minded pillars as morality, responsibility, and accountability and elect a guy like Mark Sanford?  No matter how bad the alternative—the answer is we can’t.  Beyond the general stamp of approval this victory represents, sending someone with such a proven and utter lack of self-control to make our most important decisions is insane.

I would like to believe Iowa Republicans wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen if presented with a similar candidate—and I’d be pretty stunned if they did.  The scary thing here is that, especially since Democrats are notoriously unwilling to morally judge their candidates, we now can’t be surprised should we see a John Edwards comeback.  I know right now you’re saying ‘no chance’…but nobody would have predicted this Sanford embarrassment either.

Republicans may have won a U.S. House seat last week but we lost yet another chunk of moral high ground.  Oh what a ridiculously wicked web we weave these days.

Personally I think that the story was largely propaganda to cover up the dreadful employment prospects of recent college graduates, but for the sake of argument let us assume that it is true.

Let us say that we take children from their parents at the age of four or five, lock them up for thirteen years in K-12 public school, sucker them into blowing another half-decade under the instruction of college professors, and when they can’t find jobs when they graduate it is because they don’t know how to act, and that it is their fault.

Nice try.

Oh, the Times! Oh, the Customs!

In a debate in 1984, Ronald Reagan dropped a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero; “If it weren’t for the elderly, correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no State.”

There is an action element in that statement – correcting mistakes is an activity. This implies that the elders of a society are tasked with shepherding the young into their eventual roles as mature adults in society.

In the United States today, we don’t bother with that. The United States is gripped with a much more primitive obsession. Young people are to be suppressed and controlled; instead of being integrated into society they are sequestered from it, ostensibly for their safety and education, but the real reasons are much more cynical.

Losing power to the younger generation is a primal human fear, one that takes Ciceronian civility to thwart. It is found in the mythology of every culture but the Greeks have the most famous example – Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swallowed by their father, the Titan Cronus, to prevent a power rivalry.

Youth Culture

Prior to the First World War, young people did not have their own subculture as they do today. In fact, the idea that youth would develop their own social clique would have been thought mad.

Isolated for most of their formative years inside classrooms with people who are all exactly the same age, young people develop their own cultures. Being a closed system, it is dependent on novelty, leading to the ever-changing trends that drive social status, and when this youth culture comes into contact with adult culture, the clashes can be tumultuous.

Boomer v. Millennial

The gap between the generations is a sticky one; the boomers control the government, the economy, and the academic apparatus while the millennials drive technology, enjoy the life of a digital native, and have been forced to endure the machinations of the system.

The Politically Correct, Nanny State Debtocracy

It seems like the boomers never had any intention of turning things over to the younger generation. As they aged, they announced that 60 was the new 40. Having blown their nest eggs in the stock market bubble, they are now delaying retirement, leaving millennials to rot in permanent childhood, or even worse, master’s degree programs.

Eventually, the boomers will head towards the economic exit door of retirement. They will leave the millennials with a ravaged economy, a dearth of employment opportunities, a mountain of debt, a police state, a college-industrial complex, Stalincare, and a bill for the continuing costs of Medicare and Social Security – which they actually expect us to pay, which is hilarious.

They also want grandchildren.

An Artistic Rendition

Francisco Goya, the Spanish painter known for dark, haunting paintings had his own take on the matter. The Roman equivalent of Cronus was Saturn, and Goya used the Romanized name for his work “Saturn Devouring His Son,” which is dark, jaded, and deeply disturbing to view.

It is also a glimpse of how this conflict between the generations will come to an end; in the Greek myth, the sons of Cronus rebel, cut themselves free and banish the Titans.

Endgame

This is coming to an end, one way or another. The generation in control is pushing more of the same, in terms of education, the economy, and indebtedness while the millennials inhabit a world where you can learn to speak Russian on Youtube but for some reason “must go to college” – there are professors who need paychecks after all.

Traditionally, when the prevailing system failed to offer anything for the young, they went pioneering. They built farms, prospected for gold, hit the road, and rode the rails. Today’s controlled, state corporatist economy offers few equivalent paths. With no way to buy in to the system, and no effective way to opt out of it, many of the millennials are simply stuck in the mire that we are inheriting but did not create.