Friedman's last Rand

Julian Assange’s recent transformation from mere narcissist and anti-authoritarian to every American’s new Osama Bin Laden or James Bond villain shows how utterly contemptuous Americans are of new ideas, and anyone who challenges government outside of conventional means.

And this becomes painfully clear when you look at the baby boomers.

The baby boomers are an often self-absorbed, self-important generation, convinced that they are the true “greatest” generation.

And just as Colts fans will proclaim “We did it!” and line up for eight hours to touch the Lombardi trophy as though they had anything to do with a Super Bowl victory, baby boomers claim they were responsible for every victory against authority and for liberty and society for the last 45 years — from the civil rights victories of the ’60s, the end of Vietnam and Watergate, to the ’90s economic boom — as though at no point were any other parties responsible.

Yet even as the baby boomers are the status quo, much as it pains me to say this, there is still more creativity, imagination and fight in the spirits of the idols of the ’60s than seems to exist today.

And part of the reason that people such as John Lennon, MLK, JFK, RFK and the other great voices of the ’60s remain as relevant and inspiring today isn’t merely the intrinsic value in what they did.

Unfortunately, while the legacy of what these people did socially, culturally and politically still resonates today, sadly you can name nearly all the people of this era who even begin to reach that level on one hand.

Today, every 19-year-old college student with a copy of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand views himself as the last intellectual bastion of freedom and liberty.

Instead of independent thought and analysis, today’s generation believes that society achieved perfection in free market economics and the bad music of the ’70s and ’80s — or even worse, “Dave.”

The closest the current generation comes to new ideas is different ways to become more inebriated and quicker.

Yet even those ideas are stopped in the name of your own safety, without scant a word of protest as long as “safety” is the reason.

And nowhere is this reversal of thought more clear than in the issue of Assange.

Whereas the release of the Pentagon papers was treated as important steps of revealing government corruption and nefarious doings, Americans on all sides of the political spectrum have now buddied up to demand Assange’s head on a platter.

And for what? Once again making the backroom dealing and childish gossip of governments blatantly clear?

With no sense of irony at all, these same people who erroneously view themselves as the last voice of liberty because they want to give the richest people in the history of the world yet another tax cut, these people who view themselves as the last stopgap from some totalitarian socialist, bureacratic, Orwellian government, will seek that same government to drone-attack Assange.

With no question of international boundaries, democracy or even a trial, today’s generations come together to put what is slowly becoming the last refuge of independent media and government information to death for potentially causing anyone to question the value of hegemony.


E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu