A reader who wishes to be anonymous wrote me a really good letter about the “Why Wokeness Is A Big Deal” post (which, if you haven’t yet read, please do before you comment on this letter).

I’m writing to respond to your latest piece “Why Wokeness Is a Big Deal,” because, as is often the case, you’ve addressed something neglected by almost everyone else. (In the unlikely event you print any of this, please don’t post my name!)

It doesn’t matter very much, but for context, I’m a millennial, probably around your correspondent’s age. I grew up in a secular liberal but not very political environment in New England. The featured correspondent’s remarks highlighted something that I think needs to be addressed before we can address almost anything else: millennials aren’t mindreaders.

He seems intelligent, educated, and open to debate, but he cannot follow your arguments. Why do some ideas “conjure” up others? “Why must one lead to the other?” For a lot of millennials or even younger people, these are the questions going through their heads when such things are discussed.

This argument necessitates some broad generalizations, so please forgive my resort to generational labels and sweeping statements, but I’ve noticed many baby boomer parents failed to impart a lot of “background knowledge” needed to understand the way society works, and, even with the consequences now apparent, they appear no closer to realizing that this disconnect exists. Their arguments depend on assumptions that many millennial kids were never let in on, and won’t be successful until this is remedied.

I get the sense these parents went through something similar with their own parents, but they were still raised by people who had internalized the value framework underlying these assumptions. This grounding kept them from going too far off course, even if they saw it as old-fashioned or unnecessary. They had an intuitive understanding, but not one they’d absorbed systematically or taken very seriously. With little emotional investment in the framework, they unsurprisingly failed to say much about it to their own kids. The result was more or less totally losing the plot—the kids aren’t rejecting their parents’ values; rather, they are functionally ignorant of what those values are.

Again, I say this very generally—there are many exceptions, and I think this was the result of various social trends/rapid change, rather than a moral or intellectual failing.

As on so many other subjects, Abraham Lincoln explained this issue better than anyone else. His first public speech, written well before he became a father, focused heavily on how parents have to care enough to make the case for the system to their kids, or a basic understanding of what is worthy of protection, and why, will be lost. One paragraph basically argues that everyone should talk incessantly about American values, the spirit behind them, and how they connect to each other to form a foundation for the system (in his words, “the Constitution and Laws” of America). He even argued for a special focus on infants, to eliminate the possibility that any child could experience a moment of doubt: “Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap… ”

To put it bluntly, you can’t win an argument by yelling “free speech is important, so knock it off with the cancel culture stuff!” if you’ve never convinced your child that free speech is important! [Emphasis mine — RD]

None of the writers opining on this refer to talking about such things with their own kids. I get this may have to do with basic privacy concerns, but there’s a suspicious lack of references to parenting. I definitely get the sense you are the type of parent who has these discussions with your own kids, and appreciates the importance of them, but your reply points to a single culprit: “The fact that young Americans born and raised after the end of the Cold War have no idea what communism was, how it worked, and why it destroyed societies, is a grave error on the part of our educational institutions.”

Everyone pins it on universities, but they are so successful because there’s no resistance to begin with. Those commenting typically belong to the most affected class: well-educated professionals. They possess communication skills. They don’t necessarily need to make an elaborate chart, but they do need to talk their own kids. The education system was never going to adequately convey such complex, controversial issues to every student, and something like that should never be entrusted to mass indoctrination.

And that’s the other problem: the issue here is any sort of totalizing system, not Marxism or socialism, so focusing on the latter doesn’t really help people understand it. (To clarify, I’m not denying a connection between communism and totalitarianism—such systems inevitably lead to totalizing thought because of the top-down control and legibility they require.) The corporate or neoliberal mindset that became dominant post-Cold War is quite totalizing—it may not be as bad as communism, but the relevant point is that unlike communism, it is educated millennials’ native habitat, and they are more likely influenced by its reasoning than the Soviets’.

Such reasoning has erased many connections older people think is common sense, but, as you say, your views on race were “received as gospel,” and you “were saturated” in them. You didn’t arrive at them by logical reasoning so much as absorption from the environment. When millennials reached adulthood, they weren’t fortunate enough to be surrounded by the inspiring rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr., or even traditional American self-reliance. Rather, as your correspondent said, “Many millennials, myself included, have spent a majority of our adult lives adjusting to academic settings and polarized political environments dominated by the terms and attitudes contained in Baylor training manual….It actively thrives in everyday circles and even dominates the discussions of professionals, shaping the decisions of professional and public institutions. In that sense, I imagine that most working millennials who read your article experience the adoption of these new terms as [ei]ther good or inconsequential.” (My emphasis).

King spoke of individual conscience, human dignity, and creative maladjustment. Many young people have only heard such ideas equated with frivolous and irresponsible behavior. The result is that rejecting the system brings to mind not images of liberation and independence, but losing your health insurance. This is why so many focus on on policing issues via institutions, especially Human Resources departments. They are used to systems of pervasive authority, and have been taught to obey it. The training manual language is not the language of capitalism or socialism, but of bureaucratic control in its many forms. You ask, “Or what if you simply resent being manipulated and coerced like this?” The purpose of such language is to deaden the natural revulsion to heavy-handed manipulation of oneself and others.

It’s getting worse with younger generations. At this point, the starting point of discussions has to be “utopia is not possible,” because it doesn’t appear this has been conveyed, and it is still mostly absent from the conversation. That assumption is fundamental to classical liberalism.

Free speech norms are not the failed product of well-intended people who thought good ideas would win out in the end—it’s not premised on perfection. It is premised on the idea that government interference with speech (with some narrow exceptions) guarantees constant conflict, because you won’t get universal agreement on anything, least of all controversial or political issues. And it’s dangerous because such an authority, once established, can be wielded by anyone who comes to power in the future.

But such dynamics can easily seem counterintuitive absent historical context and concrete illustrations. Especially those raised in illusions of a meritocratic, expert-managed utopia in which we know all the right answers and expressing doubts equates to being “difficult” or “weird.” (Some people do involve their infants in politics today, at least for the photo ops, but few are apt to teach their toddlers about the Constitution—people might think they are weird!! Surely it’s better to just tell them to go along to get along, smile and nod, take a picture wearing the approved slogan…)

Your response pushes back on utopian thinking explicitly, which was refreshing to read. However, you frame it as a secondary point rather than the dispositive one: “This is not only unjust and unrealistic, but completely unworkable as a policy to run a society or an institution…We will never create utopia on this earth. The best we can do is to tinker with the system to patch holes when we see them, and to find the best achievable balance between liberty and equality. This is not a heroic politics, but it is a livable one. What the people at Baylor, and everywhere that social justice ideology is proclaimed and instituted, are doing is creating more injustices, and communities riven by suspicion and resentment — and constant culture war. It is not only unjust, but it also does not work.” (My emphasis.)

Such framing has been dominant, but I think that “THIS DOES NOT WORK AT ALL, AND HERE’S WHY” should be front and center! Justice and everything else is necessarily secondary—no matter how important justice is, you will not achieve it by choosing a system doomed to collapse or even backfire, so choosing such a system can never be justified. But in order to understand this, people must know they have options other than obeying or seizing control of whatever existing power arrangements happen to be in place at a given moment.

What a great letter. Lots to think about here. First thing that comes to mind is the (entirely understandable) error so many Boomer parents like mine made: thinking that so much of what they took for granted as The Way The World Works was stable, and didn’t need to be articulated, explained, or defended to their kids.

Cultural change has only accelerated since the 1960s. I hear from young pastors that what they’re now seeing is that much of what older generations thought of as “Christianity” was really just cultural habit — and that actual Christian religion, having depended too heavily on a cultural framework, is collapsing among the young, who were formed, and are being formed, by a very different cultural framework.

An example: for Christians of my generation (Gen X) and older, the idea that marriage is one man and one woman, exclusively, was obvious, based on Scripture and tradition. It still is very clear, I think, but it is not seen that way by Millennials and Gen Z, who were raised in a culture in which sex, gender, and sexuality is far more fluid and detached from the authority of tradition, Scripture, and anything other than the sovereign self. Older Christians, if they’re paying attention, find themselves having to make arguments for things that were not contested before. Sexual orientation and gender identity are by no means the only ones, but they are the most fundamental, I think, among Christians.

What if we have been so focused on how morality has been shifting — whether to celebrate it as evolving progressively, or to lament it as declining — that we have ignored a concomitant shift in political values? For an illiberal person of either the left of the right, this values shift can be seen as both positive and negative. But for older citizens who, whether left-wing or right-wing, were formed by the broad values of liberalism (e.g, free speech, religious liberty, freedom of association) — we might well be politically what my Boomer parents were religiously: people who took far too much for granted, and failed to prepare our kids for the world as it is.

UPDATE: An anonymous reader comments:

An interesting comment. I have a slightly opposite opinion, based on experiences within my own family, that might contribute to the debate.

My own family (broadly) basically mirrors the rise and fall of the American middle class over the last century.

Generation 1 (1920-): arrived in USA from Europe. Dealt with depression and WW2, but had internalized ‘conservative’ (more like traditional) values. Worked hard, didn’t go to college, but built families and homes.

Generation 2 (1940-): the blessed generation. Roughly the 1950’s kids and baby boomers, the people who ‘had it easy.’ They didn’t necessarily become 60’s hippies, but experimented, tended to be divorced, and raised families under those circumstances. did go to college and were financially successful.

Generation 3 (1960-): the kids of the blessed generation. This is where the breakdown occurred. They, like the commenter’s argument, didn’t receive the education or subconscious values system that made their grandparents succeed, and made their parents achieve success in spite of a ‘drift’ from those traditional values. 80’s kids. Difficulty marrying and forming families, and almost all divorced. Very few children, and generally children of single parent households. Did go to college, but fell from the levels achieved by parents. Either silly degrees, or professional drift.

Generation 4 (1980-): the young adults of today. Marriage isn’t even a thing by and large. Single parenthood is the norm. College has fallen out of the family. The family has basically fallen back into blue collar/working class, without their great grandparents’ work ethic or traditional values.

In other words, the breakdown occurred with the boomer/50’s generation. They experimented and drifted, but still had the traditional upbringing necessary to get back on track in adulthood. But they failed to educate their children in that traditional upbringing, and those children did not get back on track in adulthood. I think they basically trusted the ‘system’-the values that they grew up with, and rejected in youth but eventually returned to, would be taught by the schools, by the ‘media’, by the culture-so they didn’t bother to live, or teach, those values. And their kids (generation 3), never received it, so generation 3 never achieved adulthood. Generation 4 (today’s adults) are a generation with no upbringing, and it shows.

This arc: (traditional but poor-mildly hedonistic but middle class-hedonistic but lower middle class-hedonistic and lost and poor again) really is the story of 20th century America. And I see it, as a lived example, in my extended family.