The Adolescent Society

DON’T expect a big liberal best-seller like John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society. But you and I can talk about the Adolescent Society, you know, as adult to adult. And the epicenter of adolescence, of teenage adolescence verging into adult adolescence, is the modern government mega-university. As Michelle Malkin puts it

There’s no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries.

Coddling for liberals, of course. They have “safe places” to protect students from hurtful conservative opinions while they turn a blind eye to lefty mobs.

Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance.
And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.

How about a “culture of self-defense,”says Malkin.

And Mark Steyn makes much the same point.

On Monday night, Geraldo was all over Fox News saying we have to accept that, in this horrible world we live in, our “children” need to be “protected.”

Er, just a minute, Geraldo. Those are not children at Virginia Tech. They are women and men. Or at least, at any other time and any other place in history they would be considered men and women.

Or perhaps, as Steyn argues in America Alone, they are adult adolescents. With all their basic needs met they live a life buying toys and entertainment with their allowance while they show up at class.

We do our children a disservice to raise them to entrust all to officialdom’s security blanket. Geraldo-like “protection” is a delusion: when something goes awry — whether on a September morning flight out of Logan or on a peaceful college campus — the state won’t be there to protect you. You’ll be the fellow on the scene who has to make the decision.

That’s why voices from all across the political spectrum are beginning to wonder how to do away with adolescence.

The problem is, as always, how to get there from here.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.