printThe excerpt is from my new, WND.COM weekly column, “Your kids: Dumb, Difficult & Dispensable”:
“Don’t ask why the ‘news’ is all aflutter for Meghan McCain, but earlier in February, she issued another of her sub-intelligent messages, on a forum – ABC’s ‘The View’ – that is a fertile seedbed for mind-sapping stupidity:
The Tea Party Movement was ‘innately racist,’ Meghan said. This was why “young people were turned off by the movement.” And , in her most grating Valley-Girl inflection: ‘I’m sorry—revolutions start with young people, not with 65-year-old people talking about literacy tests and people who can’t say the word vote in English.’
The rude reference was to Tom Tancredo’s observation that people ‘who cannot spell the word vote or say it in English’ are determining elections in America.
The former congressman and 2008 Republican presidential candidate was on to something. The Founding Founders decided in their wisdom that only propertied males would vote. To justify distaff disenfranchisement look no further than ‘Meghaan.’ As to the other limitation: The founders were not democrats; they foresaw today’s pillage politics – and they understood that, unchecked, overbearing majorities would be more malignant than monarchs. And all too well did the founder know that, granted a vote, the unpropertied masses would help themselves to the belongings of the propertied.
But what would ‘Meghaan,’ a member of the Millennial generation, know about a group of truly great revolutionaries whose average age, in 1776, was 44?
“The ‘Meghaan’ Millennials are a generation of youngsters that reveres only itself for no good reason.” Yes, ‘Meghan is a member of a studied cohort, born between 1980 and 2001.” Read more about these “needy and narcissistic dullards.”
The column is “Your kids: Dumb, Difficult & Dispensable.
And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.
The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!
Update I (Feb. 19): To the critic hereunder: The column references “The ‘Trophy Kids’ Go to Work,” an article that distills the conclusions of a book packed with data. The method of the column: go from the particular to the general; go from one colorful case everyone knows and move to the general.
Update II: “Thomas” below is yet another instructive case study on the Millennials, their demeanor and capabilities. Note the run-on, ungrammatical, misspelled, incoherent sentences. T. has not been taught to write a simple sentence with a subject, a verb and the attendant clauses. Not his fault, I guess, but I know many self-taught individuals who’ve made up for the deficiencies of their teachers just fine.
He’s arrogant and insulting; is big on the ad hominem and the non sequiturs; but incapable of putting forth an argument. An example of a non sequiturs hereunder: I should be picking on another generation, he says. Maybe, but this column is about his generation (I presume). The the fact that another generation is problematic doesn’t invalidate a critique of the Millennials. See what I mean by a non sequituir?
My column argued that, for the most, not his but my generation has invented and is perfecting the gadgets he cannot do without, yet he repeats the following fallacy: The twitterering twits are prescient and streaks ahead of us, their parents.
In fairness to the poor creature, I have received many such letters in my career. They tend to be from younger people, but not always.
Finally, another typical sign of grandiosity: He has not read the posting policy on this blog. Since rules are not for his ilk, he does not dare limit the reader’s exposure to this word salad of his. A good teacher would have red inked this letter, and taught the young man to say what he is struggling to say in one short paragraph.
As you can imagine, there are a dozen more insulting messages demanding space on this, my private property. The insults, moreover, evince the utter absence of intellectual curiosity—T. had not read any of my writings or my bio, so has cheerily lumped me with all of Hannity’s handmaidens.
Update III (Feb. 22): Robert’s point I’m afraid is simplistic; and certainly not the thrust of my article. Hint: Most everything I direct my cultural commentary at, and this column is no exception, can be summed up thus: ORDERED LIBERTY. Ordered liberty is about hierarchy. Read “THE IMPORTANCE OF BOUNDARIES.” Perhaps the larger philosophical point of everything cultural I write will become clearer.
Your article coincides beautifully with this email I received. BTW- I am the average age of the revolutionary and I’m looking for a tea party.
An impertinent university freshman took it upon himself to explain to a senior citizen standing next to him at a bus stop that it was impossible for older people to understand his generation.
“You grew up in a different world,” the student said in a voice loud enough for the other passengers to hear, “actually, an almost primitive one.”
The elderly man said nothing.
The student continued. “The young people of today grew up with television, jet planes, space travel, man walking on the moon, our spaceships have visited Mars. We have nuclear energy, electric and hydrogen cars, computers with light-speed processing and..”
The student paused to take a breath and the senior took advantage of the break in the young man’s litany and said: “You’re quite right, son. We didn’t have those things when we were young…so we invented them.”
“Now, you arrogant little twerp, what are you doing for the next generation?”
The applause was resounding.
[So true.]
I am of the Millennial Generation, and I cannot argue with what you have said in your column. Were it not for the fact that I was raised in an environment that is well outside the mainstream, I’d probably be in the same boat. My college years have left me very concerned about the future, and yes, artificially inflating self esteem and expectations is sure to have disastrous effects. It is not going to be pretty, folks.
There are a handful of peers who have escaped, or learned to manage, the cultural mess. I am in regular contact with a group of folks who get what’s going on, but we are few and far between.
[You are welcome to hang around on this blog.]
The McNut doesn’t fall far from the McTree.
All true. We see it very clearly from within the halls of the engineering schools. It is not so easy to draw American kids into graduate schools in engineering. But we have many from Asia who still appreciate the power of engineering to create the future we desire. It used to be that many from overseas stayed here to practice their craft. The US was the place to be. But that is less true today and going home makes sense to these foreign students, to growing economies and societies that respect them and their achievements and abilities.
In this country the media regularly portrays technically talented kids as misfits and geeks, usually using unattractive actors. I would like everyone to visit our School of Engineering and walk the halls to view very attractive young men and women, both physically and intellectually!!
Travel to Taiwan or China or South Korea and observe societies that pour vast sums into the creation of universities that graduate engineers at a pace not seen in this country.
We are gradually declining into a third world country, and most of us don’t even realize it. While we pour trillions defending countries that can defend themselves, they pour trillions into infrastructure and education.
Until we start seeing an end to outsourcing of manufacturing and labor, we will continue in this decline.
Amen to everything you said m’lady!
One cogent fact that very few seem to realize.
The “modern” reprogrammable computer systems are the direct progeny of Atanasoff and Berry (thus named the ABC Computer), and was first started in the late 1930’s at Iowa State. WE invented the darn thing, and not the little twerps you have so accurately described in your posting.
Thank you again
The Tea Party movement is open to anybody who wants to get in. Why do we have to use race as a litmus test to legitimize every thing we do? The Tea Party will probably not be successful in the long run because both major political parties will resist them. THe Democrats openly and the Republicans covertly. And yes; Meghan McCain is a fool.
My daughter (all A’s except gym!) told me that she thinks she should vote. However, she can’t take the subway by herself. She does pay taxes (dad files and pays) and estimated taxes – however I can tell that she is easily manipulated by peers – like most young people. I was off on my own in college at 15 and commuted to a job at 16. Previous generations had vastly more responsibilities than my generation – often holding jobs and raising families in their late teens.
It will not happen but we would be better off with an electorate of literate property owners – they would be far more scrupulous economically and less likely to forego essential liberty.
I worked on evaluating 216 research proposals – almost all with male principal investigators (sexist science!) and a large number of Southern/Eastern Asians (which might have been larger but it was Navy work). Lazy white folk won’t do science – and it is hard to blame them. Graduate law school and you START at a higher salary than the director of my lab. Work hard in biology and you might be a principal investigator when you turn 45.
Your kids: Dumb, difficult and dispensable leaves little to comment on except to say Excellent!
Just thought of a comment!
The pathology of a burgeoning idiot class, the end product of our schools, is more a danger to the nation than a congress of idiots. The Tea Partiers would better serve the cause if they set their sights more on the dismantling of the educational indoctrination complex than on the individual dunces produced by it.
There are millions of members of the so-called “millenial” [sic] generation. Yet, because one member of this generation repeatedly says very stupid things, (enabled, no doubt, by Baby Boomer bosses signing her inflated paychecks) all millenials [sic] are spoiled and lazy? I thought your column was supposed to be a Return to Reason. Instead, this column was an extrapolation based on absolutely no data, and even less actual reasoning. It is unfortunate because the larger point about rigourous [sic] education was obscured by the inflammatory title and poor straw man style argument.
[See post for response.–IM]
“The Tea Party Movement was ‘innately racist,’ Meghan said.”
Well, that is an interesting point of view. This, however, is where thought escapes the bubbly types named Meghan
born between 1980 and 2001. Ilana writes: “The uniformity of opinion among these mediocre and frightfully monolithic minds is scarier than its uninformed nature”
Yep, pretty soon we will all be labeled as either racists or immigrants with marks of the government beast tatooed above our eyes. All girls will be named Meghan who will look deeply into the eyes of Jose, their “true soul-mate and friend.” …. and live happily ever after ….
If you really want a demonstration of how dependent this generation is on their gadgets try this. Find a under 30 subject and take away his or her electronics. Give said subject a pencil, paper and a long division problem. The dumb look that you receive will be your answer.
On reading your column, I was immediately reminded of last Sunday when I attended a church meeting. It was a larger meeting of several congregations, and so we were sitting beyond the back of the chapel into what we call the cultural hall, kind of a gym area. I had a view from my seat into the foyer next to the chapel, where sat on a couch a young man of about 16 with ear pods screwed into his head, madly thumbing his portable device. He never missed a beat in two hours. Rather than sit with his family to be nourished by the good word of God, he preferred to sit alone lost in cyber space. And, apparently, his parents had no objection. I assume he was awake because his thumbs kept moving, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
Your column sounds another alarm for me in terms of how long I want to stay in academia. I teach in a counseling program where individualism is viewed as either a cultural disease or the mythical product of white, privileged males. The National Board of Certified Counselors has recently released “standards” for social justice (read coerced egalitarianism) by which every counselor should abide. Multi-cultural counseling courses are designed so that white males are open game for all kinds of invectives, in the name of scholarship of course. The politicizing of every field from science to counseling to art is nauseating. Even the business schools can’t escape the indoctrination. If you believe in the free market, you are suspect in the eyes of the commissars. If you disagree with stated agendas, you become a candidate for re-education tailored by human resource departments. I don’t see any “revolutions” coming from this crowd. What I see, in addition to not having read that much or possessing the ability to write well, is a lot of whining over workloads, entitlement that classes, schedules, and assignments should accomodate their “lifestyles”, and the inability and lack of will to accept critical feedback.
Well-written and provocative, as always. I understand that genralizations are necessary when writing about generations, and these generalizations may very well be true, on average. At my workplace, the most creative and can-do are Gen-X’ers and Millenials. The least so are Boomers – far and away the most narcissistic, self-aggrandizing consumers I’ve ever known. As for me, I’m a Gen-X’er with a self-confessed love of leisure. I am lucky enough to have a good (not great) knack for math that I have translated into a well-paying career that does not often require overtime. If I wanted to I could work hard to climb the ladder, but I don’t want to. At any given moment I’d rather be sitting on my deck, listening to music, reading and relaxing. So sue me. “Hard work often pays off over time, but laziness always pays off now.”
Your blog refers to what has been going on for the last four decades. The kids aren’t dumb; they aren’t allowed to discover they have brains. Two factors contribute: curriculum developers and parents who can’t or won’t, make their kids study.
Shalom Ivana… ma schlomech yom? The comments that you have put forth in this article are quite profound… You have been able to put down in words what I have been thinking but have not been able to articulate these points in a concise manner.
Toda Raba for your comments!!!
How wise is it to generalize with these broad brushes? Most would find it understandable the 20-something young lady lacks the hard-earned worldly experiences of her elders, and may lack the work ethic of those whose parents did *not* own 15 mansions (and whose father was mostly absent in her upbringing), but provocatively slamming an entire generation like for web hits and proffering the opinion that they all have ADD is as shortsighted as Miss McCain appears to be. Yes, she is wet behind the ears as most that age, but like most young people, they are going to have and should tell their opinions, however poorly reasoned. That is the dialog they need to work it out.
That snake you have in the corner of your blog, consider that it be cut it into generations, as opposed to states: do you think that will get us as a country to effectively rail against the increasingly tyrannical government that becomes more apparent to all every day? A lot of the youngins you lambaste with many of the social networking tools will rule the roost because of the power of these technologies (barring it getting crushed by the big bro).
MM is an easy target, sure, but don’t recklessly and thoughtlessly widen out criticism to the rest of those of her age. That’s like anyone else with a no-money-makin’ blog picking on any particular member of the baby boomers , and then that generation at large at their sense of entitlement and their “I got mine” attitude. If you want to go out of your way and pick on a generation, if you had to, the boomers are ripe for it. Tell me all of the nearsighted geniuses that invented all of these shell-game financial instruments (derivatives, etc.) that nearly took the country to its knees a few months back, and happened to hopelessly indebt the very generation you mock, not to mention a few generations after it. A shame that the boomers are so selfish and are putting out everyone else, including their parent they push off into nursing homes (vs the traditional role of respectfully putting your elders in your home). Generalizing the way that you do: nice work boomers, way to greedily eat the seed corn and forget to plant the trees for the next generation to enjoy! what percentage of “entilements” that are in the Federal budget are taken up by the boomers and oldsters? I’d bet it upwards of 90%. That’s really putting their sense of entitlement into practice. Boomers is a good term, because they’re blowing up the country.
Don’t worry youngsters, you can get back the author of this blog by e-mailing her to death on scripts, twittering her until she screams uncle, or somehow Facebook or YouTube her out of her measly web existence.
By the way, I remember hearing this same drivel when I grew up about computers and PCs when I grew up, about how you can’t think without a piece of paper, blah blah. Were it not for the techno-class in this country and the US being an IT powerhouse on the worldstage, and with children with, thankfully, more foresight and vision than their parents, and their ability to dream (which should be encouraged not mocked) I would fain to think where this country would be…
Let the twitter bombing begin…
(and by the way, nice glamour shot)
1976 here. So, not a millennial. Parents are hard-workers from India. And, while I don’t begrudge young people who’d rather sit back and relax rather than push themselves to their limits, the life of leisure bores me.
I think ‘Meaghaan’ thought she was about to spearhead a new youth movement in the Republican party (another reason to thank the Tea Party for ensuring a counter to ‘Meaghaaans’ wing of the “Let’s totally Compromise and Spend Money” wing of the GOP). Hers is a movement based on her laughable notion of what a progressive is (she thinks it means someone who is, like, into praw-gress)..
If we actually questioned her politics, we might find she’s basically a tax and spend liberal.
It’s the right of every generation to complain about the nature of the youth. And after the 2008 election, and the feel good hijacking perpetrated by so many Gen-Xers in the Obama campaign, it’s valid to do so.
But something occurred to me. Check out this web ad from “Generation We” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vknHKTy1MLY). THESE people — progressives — are everywhere and they’ve already got their claws in the kids. They’ve been indoctrinating me since childhood. I might still be a global warming supporter if some brave hacker hadn’t exposed those IPCC emails at East Anglia. If I ever have a kid I will be so determined to monitor what they’re being fed in school, and make sure I’m raising a responsible civic-minded future adult (who is an individual and not part of a collective).
This year my grandson graduated high school. Extremely intelligent, he never the less went through school with nothing above a ‘C’ and that was when he forgot and used his brain on a test. The summer he became a senior, I told him I would give him a pickup if he graduated high school. His senior year was straight ‘A’s; his dad asked why now? “I didn’t want my friends to know I was smart. My granddaughter that graduated the year before him is proud that she has a sixth grade reading level. This in a city where probably half or better of the students parents hold at least a Bachelors or higher. If you get a home school schedule, they list what is required to learn in a year, each year. With what is required, a reasonably intelligent student can do two grades a year without sweating, otherwise school is a bore. In John Stossel’s book “Myths, lies, and downright stupidity” he lists high school education level by country. The US comes in number 25. However, our students think they come in number one. The idea is not how to swim in a sea of mediocrity but meritocracy in Brett’s case.
I really like your site and the articles you have written. I don’t agree with everything you write but, in a free society this is a good thing. The world would certainly be a boring place if we all agreed on everything. I do however, agree with you on what I would call the fundamentals, property rights, liberty, limited government, and by definition a responsible society.
Plus as a side note I find you attractive, for whatever that’s worth.
I found in my experience with raising daughters that many of the boys of their generation (starting in 1987) are truly lost. As an aerospace engineer (missile guidance and controls, in particular) I have worked long and hard to master my craft. This is after earning a Bachelors Degree in Engineering and a Masters Degree in Mathematics. I do not see the same kind of dedication, in general, in my much younger peers. There are some very fine exceptions to this generalization. I have tried to encourage and mentor some of these young men (some of my daughters’ boy friends, for example) toward a direction of productivity and success. Clearly they weren’t getting the kind of male leadership at home they needed.
In my industry I’ve noticed a growing trend of younger engineers moving more quickly up the management ranks without really having the exposure to difficult engineering problems. Exposure to these kinds of problems was almost mandatory in the generation that mentored me. So we end up going down expensive paths because our managers do not have the experience base for making decisions about technical risk, schedule, and cost. For example you do not have to be an aerospace engineer very long to know that a missile whose length to diameter ratio is 20 will have vibration or body bending problems. Well I can name at least two fielded missile systems with length to diameter ratios of 18 to 20. These wet noodle missile problems can be solved all it takes is time and money!
Ok I know I have probably gone too far into techie talk for the purposes of this blog. I did so only to confirm in a round about way the effects of coddling our kids has on an industry that is of vital importance the security of our nation.
Again keep up the good fight, particularly on the borders!
At long last, Meghan McCain’s fundamental incoherence and brattishness have been revealed. Way to go, Mrs. Mercer.
It appears that Meghan M has something resembling a degree. I’d assumed (and hoped) that she was simply a college dropout, but no, a more or less legit university was prepared to lavish upon her a B.A. What her course work for this B.A. involved is beyond my
conjecture. Repeated demonstrations that she possessed a pulse, perhaps?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghan_McCain#Early_life
You don’t have to be a 25 year old ditzy Republican to denounce libertarians, tea party activists, etc. as “Racist”. Michael Gerson, age 45, Dubya’s “Axis of Evil” speechwriter did the same:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/…/AR2010021803414.html
I posted Gerson’s exerpts of the garbage in the posting on “Take My Pound of Flesh” (Ilana’s earlier blog).
Thomas missed the last two lines of your article. “Let the lazy American youngster look down at his superiors, and live-off his delusions and his parents. His young Asian counterpart harbors a different sensibility and skill; he is hungrily learning from his higher-ups with a view to displacing artificially fattened geese like Meghan McCain.”
One commentator on Bad Eagle.com made a statement, “For every illegal that crosses the Mexican border, five Chinese come in through Canada.” I don’t have validation of the comment, however, if it should be so low as two Chinese to one Hispanic, it still portends some tremendous changes within the next twenty years when Thomas learns to say, ‘yes sir’ as- Si Senor or shi xian sheng (I think) and that “brown shirt” comment to spam your site, (Let the twitter bombing begin…) like the men that stood in front of Jewish businesses and rebuffed potential customers or wrecked anti-NAZI newspapers shows a very strong lack of maturity.
I always enjoy your columns, but today’s just smacks it into outer space. Moronic Millenials,
too true. I’ve noticed these characteristics in many children, including my own. (in the custody of sainted court-approved single mom) who behave as though they’re deserving of awards for (pardon the crassness) “poohing” without soiling themselves. Government school, and socializing daycare have led to just what the progressives wanted: An army of dull, easily-plied drones.
I see we are getting into dating ourselves. I was born in 1982, so I guess that makes me an early production Millennial.
Against my better judgment, I went ahead and read the comments referenced in the second update. Wow. Well, if nothing else, it does buttress some of what Ilana initially said.
Lord knows I have plenty of beefs with the stereotypical Boomer. This particular article is not about the Boomers, though. The you’re-not-perfect-either line reminds me too much of a marital argument. I have followed Ms. Mercer for long enough to realize that she will not run interference for anyone.
Personally, I don’t like all the narrow defining that is done. We started with ‘Iron Age’ ‘Bronze Age” ‘Middle Ages’ now we’re down to generations, Boomers, Me generation, Millennial. There are ugly old men, ugly young men, or good decent old and young men in each group. Nothing new has been invented in almost one hundred years, the only thing that has happened is that technology has improved on existing knowledge. Ilana’s article is as Thomas said a ‘broad brush’ but most people are not catching the broad brush message that our society is going to hell in a handbasket and it threatens our long term existence because our youth have lost the drive to move to the next step to be replaced by those who retain their drive.
[See post update.]
I have four children ages 17, 14, 12, and 6. They are homeschooled, respectful, bright and willing to change the world.
There are millions of us out there. We have a lot of children and we are raising them to be active, engaged, and informed members of this society. They are also warriors for Western Civilization and Christianity.
We are going to outnumber the liberals, secularists, progressives very soon. We don’t abort our children and only stop having them in the event of a medical problem.
We are raising them to take back government at every level and the media from the inside out while hiding who we really are. Our strength is in our beliefs and numbers.
These kinds of Millenials and the now I-gens are going to lead the way to the past, the good parts of our past.
It is a Silent Revolution but our strength is in our numbers and character.
This article is not only right-on, but it is a sad reality in this Late Great America. I’m a 61 years old immigrant that went into teaching in 1995, I hold a degree in Chemical Engineering, and for economic reasons I took a position as a Science teacher in middle school. During my teacher credential’s classes I’ve noticed that they were teaching me how not to teach.
I was educated in Argentina, under the old top-down-learning-is-your responsibility Prussian method, and I couldn’t understand how you can have a group of quasi-illiterate students, working in groups to “learn for themselves” and feel good about it. I have heard so many times the dreaded words “cooperative”, collaborative” that I come to hate them. Everything is group effort, everything is global, what about personal achievement. The downside of this is students learn, rather quickly I might add, that they can obtain good grades with the effort of somebody else (spread the knowledge around), and that is the syndrome the Millennial are suffering today.
I love manufacturing industry, and my field of expertise is foundries and plastic molding, sometimes I dream, after seeing the outsourcing of our manufacturing base, that we could start all over again to do what made this country the most powerful manufacturing country in the history of humankind. But, sadly I have come to realize that we don’t have the human resources to do it anymore, and all is due to this progressive idea that self-esteem is much more important than knowledge, that self-entitlement is more much important than the effort of getting things done by ourselves. The Millennial generation is ready for the global government utopia, where the bureaucratic elite decides what is best for all us.
You’re exactly right, the barbarians are not at the gates, they are inside the city already.
God bless all of you