What bothers me about young people today is that they know so little. They do not know that the Norman invasion of England led to 400 years of repression. They do not know that the Nazis were not just some weird sect, but that they captured the hearts and minds of the great majority of Germans in the 1930s. They do not know that the policies of Mao-Tse Tung killed millions, with the sheepish acquiescence of most of the Chinese people. As did Stalin. They do not know that time after time, uncritical groupthink allowing totalitarian control has led to disaster. They have not known wars on, or even close to, their home soil. They do not know that this stuff happens, in real life, to people like us.
It bothers me that freedom of speech is being systematically rolled back, and that the young don’t care. Indeed, they positively want to prevent the expression of anything other than mainstream views.
It bothers me that tax has, in recent years, reached unprecedented levels across the Western world. This is an experiment that has never been tried before. All the evidence from history is that taxation, at its current levels, will lead to the destruction of our liberal democracies. The young pooh-pooh this, partly because they don’t pay much tax themselves, and partly because they have so little knowledge of history. They do not read what Professor Tainter has written about the reasons for the collapse of civilisations over the past few thousand years (it’s tax). They do not read what Dominic Frisby has written about the rise of Islam (it’s low tax, at least in part).
It bothers me that on issues like climate change, they don’t look at the data. They just unthinkingly and eagerly swallow the propaganda. In issues like gender, they do not seem to understand even the most basic biology: that regardless of the ambitions of any individual, it is only women who can get pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed their children.
The extent of state control has crept up, and up, and up. As has the level of taxation, up and up and up. The levels of tax that are regularly imposed in Western democracies are now several times higher than just a generation or two ago, when our democracies evolved into their current form.
State-creep bothers me.
And it bothers me that the young have no idea how damaging this is, and no idea of the dangers which it poses for the future.
phenell 