Political Evolution

"If you are not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 40, you have no brain."

- Winston Churchill.

Many Republicans concede that "We were all Democrats once." This appears to show that there is some truth to Churchill’s words. People start out idealistic and liberal seeking change, and as they grow older they become more conservative.

It likely does not matter where you start on the political spectrum when you are twenty, as you grow older you will be more suspect of change, and have less imagination as to what change will benefit your local area and the country . Life will make you more skeptical as to whether any change will actually make a significant difference, so a person likely takes a more conservative standpoint. In other words, over time life burns people enough to the point that they want to do nothing other than what is comfortable and known to them so they do not get burned again.

The equation seems to be changing. People in their 20s and 30s no longer hold liberal ideals. They are starting out life believing in conservative ideals established in the shadow of Reagan. There has been nothing but relative peace for approximately thirty-five years. They have grown-up in a time when they could ignore the government or blindly follow its lead with few consequences for their apathetic attitude.

Many of the liberal leaning that came from the Baby Boomers was in response to the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. They realized that they were the ones being asked to sacrifice themselves in a War. Accordingly, they needed to assess the War and determine if it was a cause worth them literally dying for. The same was true for the Civil Rights Movement. The Baby Boomers understood that significant change was coming with regard to race relations, and that their involvement would determine what the changes entailed. In sum, they understood that their involvement was required and failure to change was unacceptable.

Generation X on the other hand has had no issues which required them to take a stand either with or against the government. Nothing has galvanized the Xers, nothing has forced them to question the conservative beliefs they were given from their parents who had evolved from protesters into conservatives. Xers have, without having to do anything, saw the end of the Cold War, were not asked to volunteer for service during the Gulf War, and as a group, has made no sacrifice in for the "War on Terrorism" or the War in Iraq. Rather, the government has asked the people to accept tax cuts and watch sanitized news coverage of the wars - smart bombs falling near the "Luckiest Man In Baghdad," embedded reporters’ censored reports, and no body bags. They have grown up with the conservative ideas that their parents have established in their later years and nothing has shaken them up to become liberals with hearts.

As these conservative twenty year olds become older they will likely become more conservative. While they may seem moderate today, they will evolve into extremists by the time they are 40. It is not a liberal to conservative migration for the Xers, it is liable to be from conservative to extremist. Such a migration is not beneficial for American politics. In the future, there will no longer be the give and take between change and status quo. It is liable to become a pull between status quo and the destruction of the government, which is what most far right conservatives are seeking. The future of the American Government and politics as we know it depends on the youth establishing a heart, and it needs to happen before they get too old.