HAS THE LEFT LOST ITS TEEN SPIRIT? Yep. At this Bush appearance, anti-Bush protesters were outmatched by pro-Bush demonstrators. And check out this quote from the USC Daily Trojan:
“People don’t support a war in Iraq, but if you look at it, we’ve liberated an oppressed people,” said Ryan Reid, a business administration student at USC. “Saddam Hussein, thank God we caught him. He’s killed over a million of his own people since the 1980s, and these people obviously wanted to keep him in power. I think we did the right thing.”
Me too. But then, I’m in touch with the thinking of today’s youth.
UPDATE: An anonymous emailer (no name, just the less-than-impartial email address of ) asserts that there were, in fact, a lot more anti-Bush protesters than the story above reports. Was anyone there?
On the teen spirit angle, reader Ted Doukas emails:
I am a young man (24) who is about to ship off to Navy OCS in a little under a month (I am enrolled in the Nuclear Propulsion Officer Candidate Program). My ambition is to drive subs. I have a couple of thoughts about the lack of youth support for leftists causes. Granted, I am pretty conservative, as are most of my friends (many of which have chosen to serve our country under arms), but I have made a few observations. First, there is a fair amount of disgust at the cultural wreckage which seems to be the legacy of left-wing boomers. The new Offspring single “Hit That” is an example; it is a sharp criticism of the culture of llegitimacy that has become so widespread in America today. Secondly, the Left has become so strident and irrational (especially on the campuses) that it is nearly impossible to take them seriously. Unless there are concentration camps in Iowa that I haven’t heard about, Bush is definitely not Hitler. Lastly, though we are no angels, I suspect that per capita marijuana consumption among young people has fallen sharply since the peak years of 1968-1973. We are simply more clear-headed than our parents.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. . . your order is rapidly fading. Meanwhile, the Dean Wormers of the world are on the left now:
A misdirected e-mail by a Bates College staffer – he replied to a message that he meant to forward – has stoked the debate over whether U.S. campuses give a fair shake to conservative points of view.
The e-mail, which referred to the College Republicans as a “bunch of thugs,” was followed by a hasty apology, a formal reprimand and a high-level meeting about whether conservative voices are welcome on the Lewiston campus.
They’re probably on double-secret probation.