Generational Shift - Exhibit B // A Young Man's Take on the Penn State Controversy

Maryland Juice recently noted evidence of potentially big political shifts on the horizon, and we speculated that many of these changes were being driven by generational differences. It seems everyday a new voice speaks out with a different angle on this thesis, so I decided to highlight three interesting pieces on this topic. Here are excerpts from Exhibit B:

Penn State, my final loss of faith (read full article)
THOMAS L. DAY 11/11/2011 - Washington Post

I’m 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, acquaintance of Jerry Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation.

And I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation....

With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.”

They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.

Think of the world our parents’ generation inherited....

For those of us in our 20s and early 30s, this is not the world we are inheriting.

We looked to Washington to lead us after September 11th.... Instead we were told to go shopping.

The times following September 11th called for leadership, not reckless, gluttonous tax cuts....

Those of us who did enlist were ordered into Iraq on the promise of being “greeted as liberators,” in the words of our then-vice president. Several thousand of us are dead from that false promise.

We looked for leadership from our churches, and were told to fight not poverty or injustice, but gay marriage....

Our parents’ generation has balked at the tough decisions required to preserve our country’s sacred entitlements, leaving us to clean up the mess. They let the infrastructure built with their fathers’ hands crumble like a stale cookie. They downgraded our nation’s credit rating. They seem content to hand us a debt exceeding the size of our entire economy, rather than brave a fight against the fortunate and entrenched interests on K Street and Wall Street....

Thomas Day is a graduate student at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.