A blogger named Mr. Riddle observes:

Say what you will, but I don’t see a lot of great thinking coming from the young conservatives of this school (see: Shapiro, Ben or Malkin, Michelle). What I do see though, are the Ezra Kleins and Matthew Yglesias’ of the world: smart, irreverent young liberals. They are the ones now grappling with the big issues, and the ones we will soon look to for our Sacred Cow tipping.

I am reminded of something insightful that Virginia Postrel wrote on her blog before the ’04 election (apologies: I looked in her archives for the specific link but couldn’t find it). Postrel observed that a group of people with very similar political views (including her, Dan Drezner, Eugene Volokh, etc.) found themselves endorsing different candidates in the election, and that the line of difference was a generational one. She observed that her generation was so disgusted by the exesses of the old Democratic party that it lost their trust forever. She endorsed Bush, despite some reservations, because she couldn’t overcome her cynicism about Democrats.

What did the Democrats of the 70′s and 80′s do to earn the mistrust of an entire generation? They indulged in hubris and corruption. Today’s Republicans are on the verge of alienating another entire generation of young voters; employing the same tactics to achieve the same results.

An excellent observation. And I’m not just saying that because he calls me “one of the smartest young writers around” earlier in the post. Though that helps.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2005 at 2:39 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.