I fear that my generation, a cohort still struggling to define itself, is paralyzed by the hugeness of the changes we have witnessed. In our short lives, the tidy if dangerous geopolitical landscape of our fathers has simply decomposed. How are we to make sense of the world when all we have known is the deepening confusion of the people in charge? How are we to move with any sort of resolve through the shifting sands of this new era?
We came into a world shadowy with the communist threat, the biggest arms race in history peaking as we put away our first memories. At the tender age of 7, we were introduced to a newly democratic and capitalist world without war. At 8, we watched “smart bombs” turn Iraqi tanks inside out for the first time.
Our parents struggled through recession amid talks of decline. Just a few years later, they were building big houses in the suburbs with the dividends from their stock portfolios.
We were the first children to use the internet, the first students for whom its resources were indispensable. We have watched it evolve from a formless free-for-all of nerds and hackers to the most useful tool since fire.
At 17, the towers came down and the new nightmare began. We were just old enough to form ourselves under the image of Old America, the strong and beneficent champion of freedom. As a result, we felt most keenly what was lost when we were forced to accept the New American Empire and the security apparatus that accompanied it.
As we sat glued to the television news through the attack, the invasions, and the insurgency, we asked ourselves, who are these people and why do they want to destroy us? In the subsequent months and years, we would learn the answer to that question and many more we would never have thought to ask.
Our view of the world as a friendly and open place is shattered, yet with each year it becomes more important for us to be good global citizens. If we retreat within ourselves and the fortified borders of our state, we will never reverse the tide of provincialism and violence.
Though deeply flawed, our country still contains within it the seeds of something great. The revolutionary ideas that we embody as a nation – that we try to embody, pretend to embody – will outlast our corrupt politicians and our drowning bureaucracies if our generation can keep the ideas vibrant.
The intellectual will required to renew the world’s governments is not a simple thing to muster however. Repeating the tired words of the founding fathers as if they were gods is not enough anymore. New scholarship, new writing, and new compromises are necessary to make freedom, peace and prosperity real in this world. We the youth of America have the power to resist the agonizing slide into mediocrity, the power to resist the temptations of apathy, the power to resist those who would make us free people in name only.
Our generation is engaged in a struggle for clarity and understanding in a world of mixed messages and bad data. The battle for the future begins in our minds, and so far we are losing.
