Michael Barone addresses an open letter to young people who voted for Barack Obama last November. His approach is interesting; you should read it all:
You voted, as your candidate and our president said, for Hope and Change. But I ask you to consider whether the policies that the president has proposed and in some cases pushed through really amount to that.
I ask you to examine them through the prism of a book published in 1999, when most of you were too young to vote: “The Future and Its Enemies,” by Virginia Postrel (an Obama voter, too, by the way). Postrel assesses policies based not on whether they are liberal or conservative but on whether they are dynamist — promoting or leaving room for change — or stasist — tending to freeze institutions and people in place.
By my reckoning, the Obama policies are more stasist than dynamist. …
The larger point is this: You want policies that will enable you to choose your future. Obama backs policies that would let centralized authorities choose much of your future for you. Is this the hope and change you want?
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