“Age old wisdom” asserts that the young grow more conservative as they get older. In many ways for many people, that is true, sometimes drastically so. But it’s also sometimes true, and often advised, that as adults grow even older, they lose their need to conserve a world they will some day leave behind, instead entrusting that world to the young.
Either way, if anyone who’s closer to departure than arrival, wishes to protect a legacy of any kind, it is intrinsically necessary they get the young on board with protecting it.
The Young Republican National Federation fondly quotes President Ronald Reagan as saying, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
Regardless of party, most Americans would agree.
This Axios article takes a look at the projected voting demographics of Milennials and Generation Z, over a twenty-year period that, well, started four years ago.
And, as Carroll Doherty, director of political research at the Pew Research Center, says, “In the near term, the die is cast.”
However, the steadiness of current trends is dependent on how well, or how not, the older and wiser of us hold the attention of the younger and more impulsive. And in part, that may swing largely on how this, another election, goes in the next few days.
This article from Navajo Times spotlights the outlook of one first-time voter on this year’s election.
-Maude
November 3, 2020