Strong, strong stuff from a man who has had it with the Baby Boomers. Excerpt:

I’m 31, an Iraq war veteran, a Penn State graduate, a Catholic, a native of State College, acquaintance of Jerry Sandusky’s, and a product of his Second Mile foundation.

 And I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation.

I was never harmed by Sandusky, but I could have been. When I was 15, my mother, then looking for a little direction for her teenage son, introduced me to the Second Mile’s Friend Fitness program. It was a program resembling Big Brother, Big Sister with a weekly exercise regimen.

Instead of Sandusky’s care, I was sent to a group of adults, many of whom were in their 20s. They took me from a C-student to the University of Chicago, where I’m a master’s student now. They took the football team’s waterboy and made a 101st Airborne Division soldier.

I was one of the lucky ones. My experience with Second Mile was a good one. I should feel fortunate, blessed even, that I was never harmed. Yet instead this week has left me deeply shaken, wondering what will come of the foundation, the university, and the community that made me into a man.

One thing I know for certain: A leader must emerge from Happy Valley to tie our community together again, and it won’t come from our parents’ generation.

Read the whole thing. I think he’s right about a lot of this. The power of false idols is strong. People don’t really want accountability; they want reassurance.

Look at my tribe: do you think we’ve learned a thing about hubris and foreign policy from the Iraq experience? No, not to listen to the rhetoric of the GOP presidential candidates (Ron Paul honorably excepted). What about from the economic policies that led to the worst crash since the Great Depression? Oh, hell no. We just want it to be 1980 all over again. We’ve learned nothing. And we’re not the only ones.

Reading this piece made me realize that as a class, I don’t trust our political leaders, I don’t trust business and financial leaders, I don’t trust church leaders, I don’t trust military leaders. With the exception of people I know personally, I don’t trust anybody in authority. Damn. I hadn’t quite thought of it that way until I read this piece. Do you trust anyone in authority today? Why? I’m asking seriously. I don’t want to give myself over to easy cynicism, but I think given the mess we’ve made, it’s cold realism, frankly. Hell of a place for a traditionalist conservative to be in.