“Every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them ‘children.’”

John Hawkins at RWN interviews Jonah Goldberg on his new book The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. I thought this excerpt from the interview was interesting:

In terms of the youth, we have a popular culture that exalts young people simply because they’re young and I have a deep and abiding contempt for youth politics, certainly as it’s practiced on the Left. I like and work with a lot of young Conservative organizations, but you know one of the things that the Young America’s Foundation does is actually teach kids why they should have a healthy respect for the past. The assumption that we have to cater to young people because they’re young and they’re the future and all that kind of stuff is just a naked form of power worship. It assumes that since they’re going to run everything one day, we might as well cave into them now. This completely turns the idea of civilization on its head. Hannah Arendt once said, “Every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them ‘children.’”

I do agree that our culture worships youth and it never made sense to me. As Goldberg points out, just because they look better than older people (though honestly, not always), that is no reason to defer to young people just because they know less. My own opinion is that the media defers to youth because they tend to vote (if they vote) for liberals until they get older and smarter.