Feature
Hell No, We Won’t Go!
Hell No, That’s Our Dough!
FOR
PUBLISHERS, the “youth manifesto” is a familiar formula. At regular
intervals, an editor will gather up a few thoughtful ruminations
and lunatic rantings from twenty-somethings and package them for
public consumption.
Sometimes the motive is purely commercial; other times it’s explicitly political.
This magazine’s founder, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., participated in such a project in the early 1970s, a book humbly titled, MANIFESTO Addressed to the President of the United States from the Youth of America (Macmillan, $5.95). As one might expect, it was an uneven collection, filled with the type of things one could get away with only in the ’60s and ’70s.
For instance, one essay crescendoed by suggesting protest of a different caliber: “For the real Power in the black community will not be decided by who controls 200,000 votes, but by who controls the 22’s, 25’s, 38’s, 45’s and the M-16’s.”
Daniel Foster
Cap and Frown
Matt Purple
The Social Security Hangover
Helen Rittelmeyer
Moral Relativism, R.I.P.
John McCormack
Obama’s Hipster Hell
Others were more sensible, or at least more entertaining. A libertarian contributor provided a strong case for legalizing LSD; meanwhile, an avant-garde writer—whose essay is punctuated by statements like, “And I personally have little or no use for Carter’s cotton underpants even if they are very absorbent on a wilting, melting, damp, limp afternoon”— provided a strong case against legalizing LSD, at least for me.
The book’s editor did little to downplay expectations. “The ramifications of this document are myriad,” he wrote in an introduction, “forcing us to reconsider nearly every aspect of who we are and how we function individually and as a species—but its gospel is simplicity itself: survival. Not Youth survival, or even Human survival…but the naturally evolving survival and harmonious perfection of all Life in the Divine Cosmos.”
This is, on its face, a preposterous statement. Other youth manifestos perhaps do not go quite so far, but they are undergirded by the same assumption: There are intractable problems! We know how to fix them!
To my ear, Tyrrell’s contribution to the book had it about right:
It seems to me snortingly presumptuous for a twenty-four-year-old to send off to all the world his manifesto. Such an endeavor makes me wince, for presumptuous people generally appear silly. Further, there are strategic questions: to whom is my manifesto heading, and if it is whoosing toward anyone who matters, why in God’s name would he read it? Has he not read similar decrees before? Is he unfamiliar with the youthful pontifications from the twenties,The thirties and the fifties? People who matter must know more than to listen to the twaddle of callow youth.
INDEED, a conservative youth manifesto would seem to be, in more ways than one, a contradiction in terms.
“The youth,” of course, are famously liberal. In 2008, voters under 30 backed candidate Obama by a 2 to 1 margin. Protest, from the Woodstock days to Occupy Wall Street, has always been a young person’s game. As the aphorism goes, “Anyone who is not a liberal at 20 has no heart.” Some would suggest that the first challenge to creating a manifesto of intelligent young conservatives would be to find any.
Then there’s the matter of language. “Manifesto” is one of those terms—like “social justice” and “diversity”— that has been so thoroughly abused as to now spark automatic recoil.
Further, the very idea of a youth manifesto, the suggestion that a generation can speak with one voice, seems itself inherently unconservative.
Sure, it’s probably true that common events and experiences shape those who share them. Growing up amid the hardship of the Great Depression and the horror of World War II probably inculcated the Silent Generation in the seriousness and gravity of life. My generation, which came up in a post-Soviet boom, probably inherited a sense of optimism and frivolity.
About the Author
Kyle Peterson is managing editor of The American Spectator. Email him at petersonk@spectator.org, or follow him on Twitter at @kyleopeterson.
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TLP| 9.17.12 @ 6:34AM
"We have an opportunity to take action to avoid a crises in the Social Secirity System." The Redneck Rapist - Bill Clinton.
That was then.
This is now - The Magic Negro has not collected ONE THIN DIME - as he likes to say - for the Social Security "Lockbox" for the last Year.
Why not?
If we're all supposed to be recieving Soc. Sec. in our golden years, and this Street N-Word KNOWS that the Lockbox doesn't have a Pot to Piss in?
Why would he keep ELIMINATING the only source of Funding for it?
Why if FICA the only Tax that he's willing to cut?
This is not a Contest.
There are no prizes.
Can someone tell me WTF he's doing, DE-FUNDING Social Security?
And, why this isn't the biggest story out there?
(Actually, I have one Calender left over. I was gonna put it out back to keep the Deer outta the yard. But you can have it, if you can put - what I know his intentions are - into a Cogent Comment, without any references to a Shirtless Hillary.)
John Navratil| 9.17.12 @ 8:00AM
TLP,
You know the answer. That's the only tax the 50% who pay no income taxes pay. It completes the enslavement of a permanent majority to the Democrat party. It's the last fast lap around the bowl before we enter the drain.
John Navratil| 9.17.12 @ 8:03AM
TLP,
You know, Cloward–Piven!
Cobalt| 9.17.12 @ 9:40AM
Slick Willie invited Cloward and Piven to the White House when he signed The Motor Voter Act.
http://nicedeb.files.wordpress.....rvoter.jpg
TLP| 9.17.12 @ 4:52PM
You're absolutely right John. I'll get that second Calender out to you, right away.
And, not for nothing, but in Rush's first hour, he mentioned that: "We need to have A CONTEST".
Go to his site, and check the Transcript.
I know that he reads the TAS, and he often sites Mr. Kengor's Columns.
The Contest was Friday, and he mentions a Contest on Monday.
Coincidence?
I don't think so.
As Dr. Zoiberg (Futurama) would say: What an Honour.
Enjoy your Calenders.
Von Mises Jr| 9.17.12 @ 9:14AM
Considering State Pensions start shitting the bed in 2017, Social Security Disability Insurance will go broke by 2018 with over 10M (many new 99 week unemployment drones) on the dole, Medicare implodes between 2016 to 2024 per the Trustees; it is only logical that the 2037 Social Security bankruptcy must be accelerated.
If we go over the fiscal cliff in 2013 and have no state funds or health care within a dozen years; why the hell do we need Social Security to last 25 years?
Appleby| 9.17.12 @ 6:36AM
Most of these manifestos consist of a prolonged and interminable "Waaaaaaaah!"
The current NHL "lockout" is Exhibit "A" in the Youth Disconnect Sweepstakes, to my mind. In a time when so many people are hesitating between a loaf of bread and a quart of milk, to hear 19 year old kids squalling that a minimum wage of $595,000 a year is simply not enough boggles the mind. Then there are the piggies in the Teachers' Unions in Chicago, whose overfed faces above their red shirts scream GIMMEE to a community where parents are risking their by no means tenured jobs to try to find a place to keep their kids.
TLP| 9.17.12 @ 4:54PM
The current NHL Contract?
Spoken like a True Canadian.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 9.17.12 @ 8:51AM
For years, whenever there was some obnoxious expensive power-grabbing new government program, the Left would say "It's for the children". Now, we're learning that they left the important words off of the end of the sentence: "to pay for".
Jacob McCandles| 9.17.12 @ 10:35AM
That's fantastic. How liberals have managed to claim the "moral high ground" over the last 2 decades is beyond me. As I've suggested before, R and R should make this campaign about our kids and grandkids.
Purp| 9.17.12 @ 8:55AM
And all this while Mitt Romney's campaign is imploding ... how interesting.
Von Mises Jr| 9.17.12 @ 9:06AM
Endlessly observing monkeys fornicate would be interesting to you, Caliban.
TLP| 9.17.12 @ 4:59PM
Yeah.
The world is on Fire, with one Middle East President, after another, proclaiming that they told this @sshole that he needed to BEEF UP SECURITY, which he Ignored, because he was too busy Step'n Fetching it for Campaign Money to give a Sh*t, but all you can come up with is "Romney's Campaign is Imploding?
Good Luck with that one.
mike 3/505| 9.17.12 @ 5:34PM
Governor Romney's campaign is "imploding " because he had the effrontery (spelling?) to challenge President Obama's inept Foreign Policy...and as more and more reports seem to indicate, be exactly correct in doing so. How dare he?!
BTW....May I suggest a prize for this week's contest Tim?
atilla| 9.17.12 @ 9:18AM
IMPEACH OBAMA!!! NOW
Gary B| 9.17.12 @ 11:30AM
Wish we could, but he's black, so no we can't.
Ken (Old Texican)| 9.17.12 @ 3:42PM
I honestly don't know when the Phrase was ivented.....BUT I KNOW WHEN IT FLOWERED!
mILLIONS OF YOUNG MEN REFUSING TO BE DRAFTED TO VIET NAM.
God I must be getting old!
mike 3/505| 9.17.12 @ 5:37PM
You and me both....I missed that by 2 years.
mike 3/505| 9.17.12 @ 5:38PM
Correction...3
wildblue | 9.17.12 @ 4:19PM
Mitt Romney's we need you!
Mickle | 9.18.12 @ 4:10AM
I am afraid that a cold night is setlting over westeren civilization, and the warming fire needed to resore it may be more expensive than anyone wanted to contemplate.
Carroll | 9.18.12 @ 4:15AM
Can it all be just make believe as long as they pay you the REAL price on the day in question? Does order and Cause and Effect matter or can life in Mitt's Matrix be OK, as long as it SEEMS Real?