Very few things peeve me more than hearing someone saying, "Things are worse than they've ever been." It makes you wonder if the person talking has ever read a history book or seen any hard data (not media shock headlines) on disease, hunger, murder, etc.
This pesimism is particularly irksome when doomsayers project their fears and judgment on young people. "The kids these days! Right?"
Hold on a minute! The kids these days might be doing better than you think. Check out this editorial – "Are Today's Millenials a New Victorian Generation?" – from Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner. It's a short and interesting read and may give you a new perspective. a little hope, and a better attitude.
Are Today's Millenials a New Victorian Generation?
Public policymakers and political pundits tend to focus on problems — understandably, because if things are going right they aren’t thought to need attention. Yet positive developments can teach us things as well, when, for reasons not necessarily clear, great masses of people start to behave more constructively.
One such trend is the better behavior of the young Americans of today compared to those 25 years ago. Almost no one anticipated it, the exception being William Strauss and Neil Howe in their 1991 book Generations, who named Americans born after 1981 the Millennial generation and predicted that “the tiny boys and girls now playing with Lego blocks” — and those then still unborn — would become “the nation’s next great Civic generation.”
The most obvious evidence of the Millennials’ virtuous behavior is the vast decline in violent crime in the last 25 years. The most crime-prone age and gender cohort — 15-to-25-year-old males — are committing far fewer crimes than that cohort did in 1990.
Statistics tell the dramatic story...
READ THE COMPLETE EDITORIAL
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