On Choosing Your Enemies, by Randall Smith

There’s an old saying, “Choose your enemies wisely; you become like them.”

As the years have passed, I have seen more and more illustrations of it – children, for example, who hated their parents but then became like them.  Indeed, there was a whole generation of Boomers who made “the older generation” into their enemies. They resented them for standing in the way of  “counter-cultural” new things that the younger generation wanted, insisting instead that they stay on the paths their elders had laid out for them.  The older generation controlled many of America’s institutions, especially colleges and universities, and the younger generation resented that control and strove to break through the stifling hold their elders had on power.

Now, many of those Boomers are themselves part of the older generation that refuses to get out of the way to allow counter-cultural “conservative” youth to stray from the liberal, progressive path the Boomers laid out for them.  Boomers who now control most of America’s institutions, especially colleges and universities, no longer have a philosophy of “Let a hundred flowers bloom.”  When they see a little sprig of doctrinal orthodoxy or conservatism starting to shoot up, they stomp it out, much the way their elders did to youth groups they didn’t like in the Sixties and Seventies…..

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