Generation Gap On What America Is

My wife and I were commenting the other day on the vast generation gap that exists concerning the impression about what America is. The older generation sees America as a force for good around the world and through-out its history. And by "America" they mean both the actual country and its government. There was an expression that was around when I was growing up, "America, Love it or Leave it". That describes the attitude pretty well. They may not trust one of the two DC-based political parties who pick our leaders, but they cheer on the other with a full-throttled enthusiasm normally reserved for sports teams. The idea that America could be in the wrong is very disturbing to them. Their default position is that America is good.

I believe that this mind-set comes not only from our struggle against fascism and communism, but also from the way people were educated in prior generations. It has been said that the state will not hesitate to use the public schools to further its political goals. The goals of the leaders of that generation were to convince the populace that the country was good and its policies benevolent. That's what the public schools taught, and that's what the population believed.

But the people who controlled the school system changed goals sometime in the 1960s. They had a different agenda. They wanted citizens with a global, rather than a national, outlook. They wanted to de-emphasize American patriotism and American religion (Christianity). They were early examples of today's globalists.

With this new goal, the schools no longer taught that America was a beacon on a hill, an unmitigated force for good to whom all the world should look for guidance. They emphasized the things America did that were wrong, that were inconsistent even with our own ideals. Was it America bashing, or just correcting a previous imbalance toward a sort of patriotism which never questioned government action? I am not writing to decide that huge question, but rather the effects of this change. It has resulted in a vast generation gap on the question of "is America good?"

The younger generation is quick to believe that America is in the wrong. So quick that I would estimate that a majority of 17-24 year olds with an opinion on the matter believe that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the government to incite popular support for a global military campaign. Almost no one over 50 believes that. The younger generation does not believe the government story about the JFK assassination, or almost anything else. They have been trained to be distrustful of all authorities, because they were being educated to reject the values and attitudes of their parents, their church, and their national institutions.

The globalists got much of what they wanted in reprogramming the next generation, but their plan may have some unforeseen consequences that they won't like. This campaign against traditional authorities worked, but it is now starting to boomerang back on it's creators. The globalists are now the authorities, and the younger generation does not trust them anymore than the authority figures they have been educated to mistrust. The young have been trained to believe in nothing, and so they don't even believe those who trained them! That spiritual vacuum can't last long, because the human heart is not made to live that way.

But the bottom line is that young people are turning to anti-authoritarian icons like Ron Paul, despite the desperate attempts to paint Paul as a nut. The globalists wanted to tear down traditional sources of authority to make way for themselves as the replacement. In terms of power, its working, but it's not turning out that way hearts and minds wise. A generation trained to doubt the good intentions of every authority only want to give authority to people who are anti-authoritarian.