Courtney wonders whether the currently paralyzed liberal mass in America will eventually move towards the radical leftists, or the libertarian hawks.
I say: neither. The greatest mass of committed liberals (those who elected Bill Clinton, for example) is made up of baby boomers who are too set in their ways to ever escape into this dimension I affectionately call "reality". They will continue to cling to whatever scraps of power they can get ahold of, but their tenure as a mainstream ideology is finished.
The future of liberalism belongs to the largely libertarian youth. They don't really identify with the Republicans (too conservative on [some] social issues) or the Democrats (too economically socialist) and they're waiting in the wings, ready to come into their own over the next couple of decades.
The baby boomers will have their last hurrah as beneficiaries of the all-powerful AARP and then die. They will not go gently into that good night, and they will struggle vainly to drag the rest of us down with them. But they won't ever change. Vietnam is their eternal yesterday, and the USSR will always be their vision of a slightly-flawed paradise.
You hit the nail right on the head. Most teenagers i know are somewhere in the middle of the Republican party and the Democratic party. The youth feel as though neither party has their best interest in mind, and will most likely not even vote when they get the chance. On the other hand, many of the brain wave challenged young people merely echo the political views of their parents. So don't count out the political ideals of the baby boomers. There mindless offspring may keep their dream alive.
Don't worry, the kids will come into their own. It won't be long before their slightly older peers begin running for office, and they'll start voting.
Well, I echo the political views of my parents, though I hardly call my self brain-challenged. My dad and I both vote Republican, though on opposite sides of the abortion issue (kind of), and legislating morality.
I would write more on this topic, but I'm exhausted. Very good points, M.
Oooh, you do like to rant. Glad you linked this, I can't get over here all the time.
I see young people trending Republican just so long as the Republicans continue to trend more toward social libertarianism. Which they really are visibly moving toward--except on abortion, which is one area where young people now are slighly MORE pro-life than they were in decades past.
Kids will eventually trend Democrat or Republican. It's how it works in America.
Of course, Democrats could win them back. They'll just have to come to grips with the fact that most kids these days simply do not resent "the rich."
Well, I agree it's most likely that the Democrat and Republican parties will persist due to inertia, but it's certainly possible that (as at other times in the past) one of the two (or both) will collapse and upset the entire balancing act. If that happens, expect the new parties to line up more along the statist/libertarian lines than the traditional conservative/liberal lines we're used to.