Two Reasons Why Predictions About Gen Y’s Ideology are Dumb
To further fuel his fantasies of a future of Ron Paul acolytes, Andrew Sullivan highlights an article from The American Conservative:
Daniel McCarthy makes the case that the libertarian has begun an “architectonic shift” within the GOP:
More significant than the overall percentage Paul claimed [in Iowa] is the 48 percent he won of the under-30 vote. This augurs more than just a change in the factional balance within the GOP. It’s suggestive of a generational realignment in American politics. The fact that many of these young people do not consider themselves Republican is very much the point: Paul’s detractors cite that as a reason to discount them, but what it really means is that the existing ideological configuration of U.S. politics doesn’t fit the rising generation. They’re not Republicans, but they’re voting in a Republican primary: at one time, that same description applied to Southerners, social conservatives, and Reagan Democrats, groups that were not part of the traditional GOP coalition and whose participation completely remade the party.
Let’s just put aside for a moment the obvious: that the number of young Ron Paul supporters who can be rounded up in Iowa says nothing about the overall ideological temperament of all the 18-29 year olds in America. (One should be accustomed to this kind of backward logic at a paleoconservative publication.) What’s more important to address is the general assumption which is more widely held: that the voting behavior of millennials in the 2008, 2010, and now the upcoming 2012 elections says something meaningful about how this generation will behave ideologically over the coming years.
It doesn’t. And here’s why:
1. One’s political views are usually in flux from age 18 to 29.
I know the angsty, radical, 18-year-old, high school newspaper columnist Dave would have some terrible things to say about the politics of his 28-year-old, married, domesticated, new media conservative editor counterpart… And that’s just one (of many, many) reasons to disregard the designation of an 18-29 voting group and dismiss it for what it is: an artificial construct on a political scientists’s spreadsheet, not some meaningful group of flesh and blood people. People can change a lot over the course of their 20s. (And on the political front it’s usually not in a direction favorable to utopianists of either the Marxist or anarchist varieties.)
2. The First cohort of Generation Y (1982-1988) is different from the middle (1989-1995) and late waves (1996-2000)
Generational theorists of the Howe-Strauss school tend to place the beginning of the new generation as starting in 1982. The exact year is up for debate but in the end not important because at the edges of each generation we see blendings. Boomers born at the beginning of their generation (1943-1946) tend to share qualities with the Silent Generation (1925-1942) that came before them. Likewise, the first few years of Generation X births (1961-1966) often have more Boomer qualities — frequently more optimism in my experiences with them — than the full-blown, generally more depressive Xers of 1967-1977.
So far the only Millennials of voting age have been primarily in this first wave born in the 80s — those of us who have been strongly influenced by our Gen X peers and their 1990s youth culture. (We tend to share just a bit of Gen X’s more nihilistic baggage.) But the Gen Yers born after 1990 are really a whole different species altogether — more fully embodying civic generational archetypes. I’m still formulating my views and researching the nature of this middle Millennial cohort but so far I’m optimistic about the kids just finishing up high school and college. Many of them seem to have their heads screwed on better than one would expect for teenagers.
Am I the only one thinking that? Are the teens and young adults of today different than those who emerged 10, 20, 30 years ago?
I was born in 1962, but I am NOT a Boomer, and I am NOT a Gen-Xer. I am a member of the Reagan Generation!
I think the newly-minted teens and young adults have quite a lot in common with us in the Reagan Generation. We came of age during a turbulent time (Oil Embargo, fall of Saigon, USSR pretend-detente, Iranian revolution, Jimmah Carter) and a crumbling economy (gas lines, high inflation, high unemployment, Jimmah Carter). They’re looking into the abyss, as we did, and wonder whether there is a future for them. Fortunately, we elders got to experience Ronald Reagan’s amazing administration, which brought REAL stability and REAL hope back to America. Reagan converted a lot of us young adults to conservatism by his shining example of fearless leadership and love for America.
I hope and pray my daughter, a late-wave Millennial, will get to see the same “Morning in America” that I did.
I’m with you, I’m also from the Reagan generation, born in 1959.
What an inspiration it was to see this country turn around from the dark, dark Carter years. If we can just be so lucky this year…
Fascinating post. Using your own evolution makes this especially vivid.
“2. The First cohort of Generation Y (1982-1988) is different from the middle (1989-1995) and late waves (1996-2000)”
Actually, that’s the problem with the entire Howe-Strauss Theory in the first place.
Age cohorts more functionally cycle between 4-7 years, with extended cohorts cycling between 7-13 years, and not the 18-30 years cycles they were using.
Add to that the need for cohorts to have significant communication to synch up beyond extended communities, something impossible before the last 20-30 years, and add in truly significant local cultural variations, and any real national level cohort psychological structure is going to be more heavily dependent on observer bias than functional activity.
Of course that doesn’t even add in things like massive variation in ages of parents, where they can and do functionally have children in two completely different Strauss-Howe generations, as well as children raised by grandparents and such.
Well, at least you are starting to look at shorter “generational” cycles. That is a start.
Well, this ‘article’ seems to support/possibly prove my theory that people born in 1979 and 1980 are a lost, forgotten, and irrelevant group of people in the eyes of the world.
Oh don’t be discouraged, now. I’ll certainly write about the late-wave Xers from 78-81 who have a few things in common with we first-wave Yers.
My kids are 24,27 and 30. They have 27 cousins all on their mother’s side. They range in age from 9 to 31. From what I see on Facebook the big idealogical split is between the ones who went to college and the ones who did not. One cousin graduated from George Mason and thinks Noam Chomsky is the smartest man in the world. For some reason, my kids who stopped at high school and got jobs have some odd reverence for Ronald Reagan. I wonder where that came from?
Ron Paul (and Obama) fans shouldn’t get their hopes up — people don’t stay young and stupid forever.
While no one stays young forever (unless they die), there are plenty of people who stay stupid forever. You can often spot them with Obama bumper stickers on their cars.
Not shabby. As a GenXer who’s taught quite a number of GenY in the classroom, I definitely see differences. Milennials generally seem more comfortable in their own skins, and if they’re under nine thousand sorts of pressures, I see different ones than the ones I had to deal with as a teen (being punished for being male and/or chivalrous, being nerdy and/or in chess club meant you got into a lot of fights, etc). One thing I generally am *not* seeing among Millenials is the generational destruction so many Gen Xers have: the number of GenY’s I see who say “no way am I ever bringing kids into this world” is much, much lower. Whereas I would guess nearly a third of my peers to be childless.
Yeah, this faux news is way, way, way more important than news that Obama’s planning to provide Moscow with the SM-3 data so they can develop technology to counter it…
Again, we’re giving away our secrets, which cost us hundreds of billions to develop, to a country that said it would attack us if we attacked Iran, so they can develop a way to defeat it.
I hate to say it, but this country is finished. Enjoy the decline