I disagree. I think you make a corollary comparison, rather than a causal one. I teach technology and am designing a grad course on Open Source Software right now, which has deep philosophical connections to the “free music” movement. I understand your connection, but I don’t think you are deep enough in the culture to understand. Yes, western youth culture is more entitled that any culture before it. Moreover, they do augment that entitlement with an amazing lack of appreciation due to their historical ignorance. But the free music, open source push has deep connections to capitalism and free market thinking. I follow about a dozen tech blogs every day, and while most of these young techies are Obama voters, they consistently make conservative, free market arguments against regulation and control. We on the right should be using this knee jerk liberty versus regulation attitude of the youth to awaken them to the fact that our ideology is superior to the one the have been taught. They only vote for Obama because the Left has managed to dominate every cultural center of power from education to media for the past 20 years- and still maintain the absurdity that the Left is somehow anti-establishment! When my students see this bait and switch, they get really cynical and begin questioning the real authorities. I believe this is true for European youth too, who are desperate for new ideas and ways of thinking. Yes, they are entitled, yes they are pretty whiny, but we need to think more carefully about why they act that way: because the Left has made them such. If the Right positions itself as the new “Punk” fighting against the establishment we can make huge inroads into youth culture. Let’s position ourselves as the Rebel Scum fighting the Empire, because that’s what we are. Don’t get mad at them, get mad at the Establishment. http://rebelsk8.blogspot.com/
