A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be. Thomas Jefferson
George Rebane
For those new to Nevada County our Ms Reinette Senum (pictured) needs a bit of an introduction. She is the former mayor of Nevada City and a local liberal activist who has promoted many collectivist causes hereabouts. I have worked with her and have always found her to be very energetic and good-hearted. Her enthusiasm may at times be short-lived, but while she has the bit in her teeth about some project she will then be at it 24/7 until it either gets done or a better project comes along. It is not always easy (at least for me) to follow the threads of her thinking, but her good nature and polished public persona more than make up for such trifles with local audiences.
As a member of our newspaper’s editorial board, Reinette wrote a column – ‘Youth should not let Grandma and Grandpa determine their future’ – in a recent (3feb16) Union that made two strong points in her heartfelt plea to encourage young people to vote in this election. The first was explicit and advised the young not to listen to their older relatives about matters that impact the upcoming elections. The second was implicit in the message that you should vote whether or not you know anything about the candidates or issues. Nowhere did the good lady advise her young audience – which today has plumbed new depths of dumbth – to study up on the things on which they will cast their ballots. The message was ‘Get your butt into that voting booth and you can do no wrong – never mind your head, just follow your heart!’ More specifically –
Do you realize it’s your grandparents who are still driving the car? Do you realize that if you don’t speak up and do something (aka vote) then the car will never go in the direction you desire and deserve?
This has been a pretty consistent message from the Left for at least the last two centuries. And many times it has fallen on the receptive ears of the young, pre-educated, idealized empty vessels seeking a meaningful rudder for their lives. Wholesale rejection of their past by the young brought about the multiple of 19th century European revolutions that matured into the 20th century revolts and internal purges that changed world – Bolshevik (Russia), National Socialist (Germany), Communist (China), Communist (Vietnam), Communist (Cuba), Communist (Cambodia), … – which resulted in the ‘peacetime’ deaths of over a hundred million civilians.
In the olden days the expanded family was the norm as the grandparents stayed with their children, and had an opportunity to pass on their experience/wisdom to their grandchildren. In the west that is no longer so. Today grandparents more often than not lead separate lives, seeing their progeny infrequently during holiday gatherings. Modern culture has long discounted grandparents as founts of anything really valuable. This cultural transition correlates perfectly with the dumbing down of successive generations since the 1960s (cf. NCES surveys) even though the causal paths to such wholesale deficits are more diverse.
But in the end it still comes down to the responsibility of the voter, or simply put, ‘Who should vote?’ Democracy is a most fragile form of governance that comes embedded with several deadly viruses, among them greed and ignorance, with the latter topping all others. Years ago, before the union schools were politicized, most kids graduated with a modicum of civic knowledge. Today the dumbth of the young, as illustrated by numerous sidewalk interviews, has become a reliable component of the entertainment smorgasbord, corroborating what more serious studies continue to report. These would be voters are the people who have the attention span of a grasshopper, the knowledge base of a two-by-four, and are most swayed by the simplistic soundbite repeated often.
Years do temper the ‘ready, fire, aim’ zeal of youth. IMHO the young would much benefit from talks with those who have celebrated a lot of birthdays, whether they are their grandparents or some other trusted individual who has their best interest in mind. So my advice to the young would be to do more than a bit of homework about the structure of our country, its history, its current course and issues, and America’s role in global affairs. Along the way they should attempt to become numerate, so that they can really understand social issues. (For the interested reader, my own voter prerequisites can be found here.)
rebanesruminations.com 
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