'Mature youth' – an oxymoron?

Conservatives will often bemoan the degradation of American culture, perceiving that it is being destroyed by perverts and miscreants with low morals. And, despite decreases in juvenile crime over the past few decades, they'll say that the nation's youth are becoming more hopelessly immoral – perhaps because they play too many video games. Regardless, many people fail to understand why this is, and they unwittingly perpetuate the problem.

Recently, I attended a summer program on the campus of Yale University. Most people would probably believe that only intelligent, mature people can gain access to such a prestigious institution. Unfortunately, there can be as many irresponsible delinquents in voluntary summer programs as there are in public schools.

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Males didn't care if they could be differentiated from animals, and they certainly didn't care about academics. I asked a few people why they were interested in the program; their response was that it was a good way to meet girls.

At one point, some individuals determined that it would be amusing to post pornography in one of the dormitories. After they spent an hour printing out depictions of lesbian acts, they finally decided it would be better just to call one of their mothers and ask her to send her son's pornography collection.

These people represented the liberal side of American culture. They derived humor from perversion, and they believed their own narcissism justified doing anything they felt would be fun. Behaviorally, they were average students of the public schools. Academically, they were far superior. Nonetheless, the cultural infection that liberalism bestowed upon us has touched everyone, and many have succumbed to it.

However, liberals alone cannot be faulted for placing us in our present state of affairs. While they did provide the anti-religious fervor required for pervasive immorality to germinate, a minority did not transform our culture.

This observation dawned on me rather recently when, ironically, I was attending the National Right to Life Convention as a reporter. In one session, I listened to three speakers talk about the need for more young conservatives in the media. Unfortunately, I was the only young conservative (I'm defining "young" as "under 50") in the room. I imagine the rest of the young conservatives in the building were in a session more suited to them, such as the one about learning to speak of abortion without "losing your lunch."

On the last evening of the convention, Sen. Sam Brownback gave a speech. At least, he spoke to the adults. The kids, meanwhile, went to a dance that had pizza and some sort of strobe lights.

In short, liberals aren't the only ones contributing to the downfall of our culture. The inaction of conservatism's younger generations and their failure to make an effort at transcending their peers in society can make them no less accountable.

In "The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager," Thomas Hine lamented the modern spectacle that youth has become.

"What was new about the idea of the teenager at the time the word first appeared during World War II was the assumption that all young people, regardless of their class, location or ethnicity, should have essentially the same experience, spent with people exactly their age, in an environment defined by high school and pop culture," Hine wrote.

Hine summarized the result of that assumption, saying, "This lengthy waiting period [of youth] has tended to reduce young people's contacts with older people. … That in turn has led to the rise of a youth subculture that has helped define and elaborate what it means to be a teenager. Any account of the rise of the teenager is, in large part, an account of the changing shape and continuing importance of teen culture."

Of course, our nation hasn't been the first to become irrationally fixated on separating people into defined groups. Mussolini also once intentionally grouped people by sex, social group and age. Under his reign, Italy had 20,000 dopolavoro recreational circles, thousands of veterans' organizations, fasci for women, Young Italian units for girls, balilla for little boys and Wolf Cub circles for the smallest "new Italians." It all helped to prevent the autonomous expression of class identity or alliance.

In the past, liberals have sent me mail fretting over whether or not I've talked to enough poor people and learned enough foreign languages (in the spirit of diversity, I guess) to be truly compassionate. Well, by their standards, probably not. But until my peers recall the meaning of "vigilance" and cease allowing the obliteration of liberty in this nation, I will not keep silent.

Rudy Takala is 16 years old and was homeschooled for nine years. His columns have appeared on more than 30 websites across the Internet.