Does the new generation of Americans have a different view of freedom and equality?
The younger generation is rebelling against tradition, refusing to do things the way their parents did. They are protesting against perceived injustices, and seemingly blind to others. The ideals of “freedom” and “equality” seem to be freighted with new meanings.
Those kids today.
But are we speaking of 2015 or 1776?
On the eve of the American Revolution many of the leaders in the rebellious colonies were quite young. Ben Franklin was 70. George Washington was 44. But Patrick Henry, John Adams, John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson were all south of 40.
“We tend to see them as much older than they were,” said historian David McCullough in 2005. “Because we’re seeing them in portraits by Gilbert Stuart and others when they were truly the Founding Fathers—when they were president or chief justice of the Supreme Court and their hair, if it hadn’t turned white, was powdered white. We see the awkward teeth. We see the elder statesmen. At the time of the Revolution, they were all young. It was a young man’s-young woman’s cause.”
It was Paine who wrote in Common Sense, published the first day of 1776, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
And they did recreate it, toppling established patterns of thought and behavior, and the rigid hierarchies that reinforced those long-standing habits.
The ability to break away from the old has been attributed to all sorts of causes, but surely one of them is generational. The youth of the founding generation helped them reimagine what was possible, whether it was because of Enlightenment ideas or economic interests.
Should we view some of today’s social and technological changes in a similar generational light?
The digital revolution seems to have contributed to new attitudes about enduring values.
According to polls, a high percentage of young people have embraced a new definition of equality that includes same-sex marriage. Many are activists for social equality.
But at the same time they have driven a new conception of freedom that includes the open sharing of intellectual property (e.g. Napster) and untrammeled, untaxed ecommerce. Napster and Amazon are widely credited—or blamed, depending on your perspective—for the demise of music publishing and Main Street
A recent example is the rise of Uber, which links independent drivers to customers who need rides. Technology, in the form of smartphone apps, has driven the rise of this “share economy.”
But the taxi industry, which exists in a thicket of government regulation, objects to the idea of an emerging competitor that doesn’t have to play by the same rules.
How can we settle the issue when new technology that promises to free us from the old way of doing things runs up against a basic sense of fairness?
Policymakers are trying to sort through this, but in the meantime the lines seem to be generational.
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