The current state of democracy in the United States is not about ideas. There isn't any legitimate political debate. I'm a 71 year old white American male and it has been ~25 years since I witnessed any 'exchange of ideas' (or 'different views') taking place in American elections.
Instead, we are confronted by ~60% of white Americans trying to shove their ignorance and backward culture (together with their racism and intolerance) down the throats of the rest of us. Similar nationalist extremism is taking hold across the western world. It's scary. It must be seen for what it is and it must be defeated. By any and all means necessary.
What are you talking about? there's no debate just shoving ignorance and backwards culture?
It seemed like you were going in an entirely different direction in your first and second paragraph. It's not a debate because you're not trying to win over those 60% of white Americans and are interpreting their lack of compliance as backwardness or ignorance.
While on every issue. it seems like things have drifted left in the last 25 years. We went from legal marijuana in a few states to dozens. We went from Obama running on marriage being between a man and a woman and telling Rick Warren as much to gay marriage is great and wonderful and if you are the CEO of Mozilla donating to a traditional marriage political action campaign is unacceptable. Affirmative Action can be found illegal by the supreme Court and still continue by other means. Like Southern Schools blocked integration by other means. Is it just too hard to accept the schools that 100 years ago denied access to Jewish students now deny access to Asian students?
As for nationalist extremism isn't that just the difference between the somewheres and the anywheres? people who view themselves as citizens of the world vs people who are entrenched in an area, and are in the same house their parents and grandparents had?
Young people are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
Aristotle, 4XX BCE
“The beardless youth… does not foresee what is useful, squandering his money.”
Horace, 1xx BCE
“Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.”
Book III of Odes, Horace, 2X BCE
“Modern fashions seem to keep on growing more and more debased … The ordinary spoken language has also steadily coarsened. People used to say ‘raise the carriage shafts’ or ‘trim the lamp wick,’ but people today say ‘raise it’ or ‘trim it.’ When they should say, ‘Let the men of the palace staff stand forth!’ they say, ‘Torches! Let’s have some light!’”
Tsurezuregusa, Yoshida Kenkō, 1332
“Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie . . . the ancient are scorned, the honourable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded.”
The Wise-Man’s Forecast against the Evil Time
Thomas Barnes, 1624
“… I find by sad Experience how the Towns and Streets are filled with lewd wicked Children, and many Children as they have played about the Streets have been heard to curse and swear and call one another Nick-names, and it would grieve ones Heart to hear what bawdy and filthy Communications proceeds from the Mouths of such…”
A Little Book for Children and Youth
Robert Russel, 1695
“Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt…”
Letter in Town and Country magazine
1771
“The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth…”
Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family, Reverend Enos Hitchcock, 1790
“…a fearful multitude of untutored savages… [boys] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits…[girls who] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody…the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly.”
Speech to the House of Commons
Anthony Ashley Cooper, February 28, 1843
“… see the simpering little beau of ten gallanting home the little coquette of eight, each so full of self-conceit and admiration of their own dear self, as to have but little to spare for any one else…”
“Children And Children’s Parties”, published in The Mothers’ Journal and Family Visitant, S.B.S, 1853
“A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages…chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements … they require out-door exercises–not this sort of mental gladiatorship.”
Scientific American
1858
“Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline…”
The Psychology of Adolescence
Granville Stanley Hall, 1904
“We defy anyone who goes about with his eyes open to deny that there is, as never before, an attitude on the part of young folk which is best described as grossly thoughtless, rude, and utterly selfish.”
The Conduct of Young People
Hull Daily Mail, 1925
“The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz … women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing…the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honoured custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.”
Hour of Decision
Oswald Spengler, 1933
“Probably there is no period in history in which young people have given such emphatic utterance to a tendency to reject that which is old and to wish for that which is new.”
Young People Drinking More
Portsmouth Evening News, 1936
“Cinemas and motor cars were blamed for a flagging interest among young people in present-day politics by ex-Provost JK Rutherford… [He] said he had been told by people in different political parties that it was almost impossible to get an audience for political meetings. There were, of course, many distractions such as the cinema…”
Young People and Politics, Kirkintilloch Herald
1938
“Parents themselves were often the cause of many difficulties. They frequently failed in their obvious duty to teach self-control and discipline to their own children.”
Problems of Young People
Leeds Mercury, 1938
“…in youth clubs were young people who would not take part in boxing, wrestling or similar exercises which did not appeal to them. The ‘tough guy’ of the films made some appeal but when it came to something that led to physical strain or risk they would not take it.”
Young People Who Spend Too Much
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 1945
“How to bring young people into membership of the Church was a pressing problem raised at a meeting… Sunday School teachers in the audience had found that children were apt to leave Sunday School when they had completed their day school education. They were not following on into the church.”
Why Do Young People Neglect Religion?
Shield Daily News, 1947
“It’s an irony, but so many of us are a cautious, nervous, conservative crew that some of the elders who five years ago feared that we might come trooping home full of foreign radical ideas are now afraid that the opposite might be too true, and that we could be lacking some of the old American gambling spirit and enterprise.”
The Care and Handling of a Heritage
Life, 1950
“Many [young people] were so pampered nowadays that they had forgotten that there was such a thing as walking, and they made automatically for the buses… unless they did something, the future for walking was very poor indeed.”
Scottish Rights of Way: More Young People Should Use Them
Falkirk Herald, 1951
A few friends just now are leaving their parents’ nest. Many friends are getting married or having a baby for the first time. They aren’t switching occupations, because they have finally landed a ‘meaningful’ career – perhaps after a decade of hopscotching jobs in search of an identity. They’re doing the kinds of things our society used to expect from 25-year-olds.”
Not Ready for Middle Age at 35
Wall Street Journal, 1984
"What really distinguishes this generation from those before it is that it’s the first generation in American history to live so well and complain so bitterly about it.”
The Boring Twenties, Washington Post
1993
“The traditional yearning for a benevolent employer who can provide a job for life also seems to be on the wane… In particular, they want to avoid ‘low-level jobs that aren’t keeping them intellectually challenged.’”
Meet Generation X,
Financial Times, 1995
“They have trouble making decisions. They would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder. They have few heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own. They crave entertainment, but their attention span is as short as one zap of a TV dial.”
“They haven’t got the skills to discuss things, they haven’t got the skills to disagree.”
This article is about something new and different: People with different views are shouted down on college campuses and cancelled on social media, so the young don't learn how to "agree to disagree" or any kind of speech and debate skills. This implies a lowered ability to think critically.
>> This implies a lowered ability to think critically.
This does not necessarily imply a decreased ability to think critically. Instead, it suggests that they excel in mimicry. Having been immersed in the internet from a young age, they socialize extensively in this environment. They quickly learn that expressing unique or open opinions can lead to conflict. This realization often occurs at a particularly impressionable age. The pervasive culture of cancellation is not counterbalanced by lessons in rhetoric. Consequently, they learn to silence their opinions, keeping them private. They might believe that maintaining social connections will provide a sufficient reward as a trade off.
I developed my critical thinking skills by reading authors I disagreed with and by debating people who had much different opinions than myself. I don't know how you would develop critical thinking skills without that. Care to give some examples?
I believe the debating part does not actually help in developing critical thinking. Instead, it helps you to express your opinion and listen to others. This part focuses on distributing and adjusting information, rather than being a process of learning critical thinking. The debates that occur internally (comparing viewpoints with facts) or arguing with yourself (or an imaginary opponent) are not equivalent to communicating thoughts externally, especially if arguing could potentially harm your future. I doubt that I have to provide any examples on the argument and the constraint that you have set.
True in the general sense of complaining about young people throughout history, but I'm more interested social media enforcing group think in ways never before possible. They don't need mature adults to censor them, they censor themselves.
Issuing broadscale complaints against the youth without being specific about how the gripes buttress the article feels like an example of not knowing how to argue.
That's the core problem the article is talking about.
Just doubling down and saying it's all the same again avoids creating any arguable contentions. It's a belief in symbols - asserts a known/believed Ballardian hyper-real - without establishing why these quotes support or back the article.
Instead, we are confronted by ~60% of white Americans trying to shove their ignorance and backward culture (together with their racism and intolerance) down the throats of the rest of us. Similar nationalist extremism is taking hold across the western world. It's scary. It must be seen for what it is and it must be defeated. By any and all means necessary.