“Get off my lawn! And take those Bernie signs with you!”
Overwhelming support for Bernie Sanders among millennials has conservative baby boomers quaking with rage in their orthopedic boots. Like every generation before them, boomers are quick to condemn the “kids these days” for forsaking all that is good, holy and — dammit — American!
Because we millennials seem obsessed with universal healthcare, free college tuition and a higher minimum wage, traditionalists may easily dismiss us as whiny ingrates who just want a free lunch while we ride the coattails of the previous generations.
And since their privatized insurance may not cover the necessary painkillers and their puritan sensibilities prevent them from smoking a joint, conservative boomers (consoomers?) simply can’t endure the headache of trying to understand exactly what is making these millennial time bombs tick.
In their righteous indignation, they prefer to immediately dismiss the entire Generation Y with the label, “entitled.” And while this summation is good for a cane-shaking sound bite on Fox News, it doesn’t accurately describe the driving motivation behind many in this new generation of liberals.
Baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) were raised believing in the American Dream. Their devotion to capitalism, entrenched by Cold War paranoia, resulted in strong impulses toward ambition, individualism and materialism. Hence, the “Me Generation” believes that a person is only as successful as they make their mind up to be.
The values of the rising generation are different (and that’s an important thing to note — it’s not that millennials don’t have values, it’s that our values are different). We were raised with the Internet. Our media hasn’t been confined to the Cleavers and the Bradys. The interactive community that raised us encompassed various nationalities, ethnicities, classes and orientations. The result is the sense of togetherness with all humankind, not just our straight, wealthy, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant neighbors of suburbia.
When we look around and see the injustice and inequality of the world, it’s not entitlement that grips us; it’s sympathy. Entitlement, the belief that one inherently deserves special treatment, is the exact opposite of what we feel.
We recognize that we already are, by no virtue of our own, being given special treatment. By sheer luck of the draw, we are born into a country of privilege. On top of that, some of us are granted male privilege, white privilege or straight privilege. Some of us are raised in opportune environments that lay the foundations of success unattainable to others. None of that has to do with personal merit, only with chance.
We liberal millennials aren’t trying to load the dice in our favor. We recognize that it already is, and we are trying to even it up for everyone, starting with our own citizens.
Like President Kennedy, we’ve asked ourselves what we can do for our country. And the answer we’ve found is: So much more. Our country is not the government or our borders. Our country is “we the people.” All of us. Not just the 1 percent.
Our country is the struggling single parent making minimum wage at Walmart. Our country is the student from a low-income family who can’t afford college. Our country is the gay person who was fired from their job for their orientation. Our country is the veteran returning from war with PTSD. Our country is the young man gunned down by police for the crime of being black. Our country is the patient afflicted with chronic illness who can’t afford insurance.
It’s not about getting free stuff. It’s about providing every American the opportunities that others are born into. It’s about recognizing the value of every single life and trying to improve it. And what’s wrong with that?
I’m reminded of a scene from one of my favorite films, It’s A Wonderful Life where Mr. Potter, the wealthy vulture capitalist, remarks that starry-eyed idealism creates “a discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class.”
The protagonist, George Bailey, responds:
“Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers? … Do you know how long it takes a working man to save $5,000? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?”
Like George Bailey, we millennials don’t see our fellow citizens as mere human capital, cogs in a giant economic machine. We see them as our family and friends with the same right to pursue happiness that we have. And we recognize that it’s difficult to pursue happiness when shackled with the chains of native circumstance.
We don’t feel entitled to a free lunch. We feel fed up with a system that can afford to send its young people to war, but not to college. We feel fed up with a system that can afford welfare for corrupt corporations but not struggling families.
Call it crippling kindness. Call it artless altruism. But don’t call it entitlement.
tanner gilliland 
I couldn’t agree more what a great article, people need to wake up to this truth. No one said we feel entitled but when the top 1/10 of 1% is making more than the bottom 90% we have a fundamental problem in this country, when there are loopholes put in place for rich corporations to be able to merge with foreign companies so that they don’t have to pay their fair share of American taxes while the working class are working sometimes two or three jobs just to make ends meet there is something fundamentally wrong in this country and things need to change
I stopped reading at “white privilege” “male privilege” “straight privilege” …. Give me a break.
It’s a real thing.
Do you want to know what white straight male privilege is? White straight male privilege is dying in a war to free Millions enslaved by their own people in another country, then sent here. White straight Male privilege is getting the shaft in Family court by a bitch who uses the children you love as leverage to squeeze more money from you that you work long hours to earn. White straight male privilege is getting high SAT scores and getting denied entry into prestigious colleges because of a racial quota. White straight male privilege is being told constantly to sit down, shut up and don’t speak because you couldn’t possibly understand what it means to be oppressed after growing up in a predominately Hispanic community and being referred to as “that white kid” while getting the shit beat out of you. White straight male privilege is getting arrested because some girl accuses you of “rape” when she has no evidence, or witnesses. Just her sad face and words. While if a man accuses a woman of rape he must produce evidence and be faced with the stigma of “getting beat up by a girl.”
Your article proves one thing: The Millennials are more interested in evening the playing field despite the fact that most the people you speak of are unqualified to even compete. You think that people feeling disenfranchised because of “systematic racism or homophobia” are excuses to tear down a system that makes people individuals and not pathetic collectivists. Just because your faith let you down, doesn’t mean you need to make the fatal error of thinking everything else you knew was wrong.
Dan Miller, thanks for providing an alternate view. The issue is definitely not one sided. Some of your examples hit really close to home.
I am actually fairly agnostic, politically. I have self-referentially used the adjective, liberal, to communicate the actual definition of the word: “open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.” Notice, I have not advocated for any specific policies. I have merely tried to explain what I believe to be at the heart of various political inclinations among millennials, however practical or impractical.
In regard to the comment about my faith and its connection to my “fatal error” of habitual questioning, I’ll quote Descartes: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. Thanks again for commenting.
Your loss.
…and therein lies the problem.
I like how you differentiated between entitlement and “artless altruism”, to borrow your phrase.
Your praise of the effects of the internet on our generation is interesting. I see increasing technological access as a double-edged sword. There’s strong evidence that increasing media presence in society hinders a child’s ability to self-regulate (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514), which leads to the question of what effects this will have as children mature. Will people who tend to lack self-regulatory skills turn to outside sources in an attempt to help themselves self-regulate? And, if so, will these people also come to believe that everyone requires outside influence to self-regulate sufficiently (or, in other words, to act fairly and “be good”)? It seems to me that the desire to enforce what is perceived as equality via force (government) might stem from this kind of belief, although it’s definitely not the only possible cause.
While growing millennials were inundated in technology more than previous generations, the rising generation is being drowned by it. I question the wisdom of taking steps that gives the government full power to force everyone to be equal and society to be “fair” when the people who are preparing to take over the government are, as a generation, proving less able to govern themselves. To that end, “crippling kindness” seems accurate: kindness spurs actions with unintended consequences that end up hurting more than helping.
Those questions and concerns aside, though, I liked how this article presented a different source for “entitlement” (a desire for equality rather than selfishness).
While you have stated that you don’t like being lumped into the millenials stereotype, you have chosen to lump boomers. Well, Bernie is a boomer. And, while I don’t wear ‘orthopedic boots’, I do drive a Prius, buy at farmers markets, protest Trump, and recycle, I too am a boomer. Yes, I want universal health care and something to be done about school loans. Though I have to admit, that I feel many who ran up huge loans could have lessoned them by living at home and working part time for their groceries like I did when I went to school. My biggest complaint about millenials is that they seem to whine an awfully lot. But to be fair, so do my middle school students.
That’s why I wrote “conservative baby boomers” and “traditionalists.” I graduated college debt free by working three jobs and maintaining a high enough GPA for a scholarship. Unfortunately, some people will do the same and still leave school with major debt. I think every generation has something to complain about.
I agree 100% with Dan Miller. Well stated and, like Tanner, hits home. I am sick of defending my “white privilege”. I’m really impressed with Tanner’s adult and thoughtful response to Dan.
Today I opened an old email.
It was from you.
Inside there were four poems.
As I read them, I began to cry.
I hope you know you changed my life.
You were such an inspiring example.
After I read, I looked you up.
Things have changed.
Still, the tears ran.
Yet, I couldn’t go without letting you know.
You changed my life.
Hi Tanner
I just watched that 2-part 2-person interview you did about your long process of leaving the church and found myself profoundly impressed by your thoughtfulness, fairness and balance. I thought I’d check out your web site. This article is not worthy of that man. It is a petulant tirade with a simplistic, judgemental world-view. The most offensive thing, to me, was your adoption of the term “liberal” for “socialist”. Liberal relates to liberty, which is individual freedom. I am not American but can see the huge, systematic problems in your country, biggest of which is as you say the frightening income inequality – of course this really relates principally to the massive erosion of America’s white middle-class over the past few decades, a question on which you are conventionally silent. My generation, the baby-boomers, valued freedom above all. Listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young singing ‘Find The Cost Of Freedom’ and ‘Chicago’ – they pretty much lay out these values.
There’s nothing wrong with socialism, except that it, collective action, is the antithesis of freedom. Ultimately, it’s just a different world view, where you confiscate wealth from one group to solve problems in another – the end result, as has occurred everywhere, is governments that use the public purse to bribe their way back into office. Every election becomes an auction. Most of the world is more socialist than the USA. The world’s most successful country, by any measure, has noting to do with socialism yet provides THE WORLD’S highest per-capita net wealth, best health system, best and fairest retirement system, highest employment rate (massive over-employment: more than half a million come into the country every day to work, in addition to the migrants…), and most importantly, the record, by FIVE centuries, of continual peace. When I say “no socialism” this means that, despite the amazing outcomes, the government has not a cent of its budget in things like health and pensions. It consequently also has an extremely low rate of taxation and the world’s highest productivity.
This country also happens to be the world’s only democracy. Democracy means, “government by the people themselves” and, explicitly not, “government by the representatives of the people.” As anyone would know who has bothered to read the US constitution’s foundational document, the Federalist Papers, the USA is explicitly and intentionally not a democracy – it only came to be known as such due to the mis-translation of a book written in 1830, De La Democratie En Amerique – ON Democracy in America, which we all know as Democracy In America.
The world’s greatest country’s second great trick after democracy is massive decentrlalisation, which means that a voter knows that their vote is important. The greater the centralisation of power, the greater the degree of alienation and sense of “the government” as something other than the people themselves. This particular country does not even have perpetual taxation. Every 2 decades the people have to confirm their on-going taxation.
You can check any of these stats – longest continual peace (the country declared “eternal peace” in 1490, demolished all its forts and armed itself to the teeth, perpetually), highest net wealth, highest productivity, etc. and you will quickly appreciate what a remarkable AND modest country is The Light Of The World.