Reagan And Generation Next
By Hans Zeiger (06/11/04)
Last year’s British Social Attitudes Survey demonstrated that young Brits born around the time of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative term as Prime Minister are the most conservative generation alive in their country. This is the philosophical endorsement of a term dubbed on British youngsters by their press: “Thatcher’s Children.” With equal reason, it ought to be said that the approximately 30 million Americans born between 1981 and 1988 are “Reagan’s Children.”
The passing of President Reagan gave us pause to reflect on his sweeping impact on the course of world history. The America we love is the America that Ronald Reagan inspired us to love.
We would thus be a decent generation to consider ourselves Reagan’s Children. It is not merely for the time he spent in office during which so many of us were born, myself included, that we should associate our generation with the name of President Reagan. It is also because this generation is notably reflective of Reagan’s conservatism, as well as his optimism.
It is an optimism I first discovered in the Fifth Grade upon reading Ronald Reagan’s autobiography An American Life, and I considered him a hero after that. Growing up, my bedroom wall displayed a large poster of Reagan standing beside a pillar along the West Wing corridor, a 1984 “Americans for Reagan” campaign banner, and a poster with this quote by the Great Communicator: “Freedom is not something to be secured in any one moment of time. We must struggle to preserve it every day. And freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
It is not difficult to understand the potential perils at which freedom continues in America when we see the laxity with which responsibility is matched to freedom. And many young people scorn responsibility.
It is why Reagan declared, “The future of our nation will be determined, more than anything else, by the character of our children.”
We have character problems indeed. But there is a strong and vital corps of young Americans who are committed to the simple, permanent things, the things of the spirit that define the American character. These are Reagan’s Children who will keep America going.
I have twice attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservatives in the nation’s capitol, and I’ve seen the mighty impact of the Reagan legacy in this generation. This year, over 2,000 young conservatives came to CPAC.
Several years ago, Young America’s Foundation purchased Ronald Reagan’s California ranch Rancho del Cielo in the Santa Ynez Mountains, and thousands of conservative students have passed through the ranch for activist training seminars, intellectual discussions, and conferences.
Among rankings provided by the college search corporation Princeton Review is the category, “Students most Nostalgic for Ronald Reagan.”
But it is more than passive nostalgia; Reagan’s Children are more conservative than any generation since statistics were available. The Harvard Institute of Politics reports that 31 percent of college students identify as Republicans, compared to 28 percent who are Democrats. And according to a Higher Education Research Institute report, 24 percent of college freshmen consider themselves liberal while an all-time high 21 percent say they are conservative. Even the Baby Boomers and Generation Xers who were Youth for Reagan in 1968, 1976, 1980, and 1984 could not rival with the energy and passion of what Rolling Stone and the New York Times have recently called, “young Hipublicans.”
President Reagan often spoke of a bright future, and I do not think he was a false prophet. “The future of our country,” he said, “the direction that we go as a people, whether we move ahead to meet the challenges of the future or slide back into the irresponsible policies of the past, will be determined by those who get involved.” In many ways, it was Reagan who inspired me to become active in politics when I was a teenager, to take an interest in understanding and defending liberty.
As a 13-year old, I wrote a letter to President Reagan: “I have certainly been inspired a lot by you and that which you stood for … I cannot fully express my enormous gratitude for your support of patriotism … Thanks for leading America to victory!”
I did not receive a reply, nor did I expect one, for by then, Reagan had retired to the mysterious quietude of what Nancy called, “The long goodbye.” And likewise, Ronald Reagan could not utter any last words before he died last Saturday; his mind was long ago debilitated by Alzheimers disease. But I suppose that if he could have uttered a final exhortation, it would have been those other last words once uttered by George Gipp in the movie Knute Rockne-All American (played by Reagan in 1940): “Someday when things are tough, maybe you can ask the boys to go in there and win just once for the Gipper.”
The going is tough. And the boys are in the fight. Then we must, at this moment and in this generation, renew our faith in America’s future, for that is the best tribute we could pay to the legacy of Ronald Reagan. May Reagan’s Children dare to dream, struggle to preserve the sacred fire of liberty, and ultimately win one for the Gipper.
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