- There's a pesky flaw at the core of our democracy: How
do we count those who can't vote? Not those who don't vote (they can take
care of themselves by voting). But those people who can't vote, because
they're either too young or not yet born. How, in other words, do we reckon
the future?
-
- For most of history, this question didn't matter much.
Before the atomic bomb, we couldn't really break the future. And before
deficit financing, we couldn't easily bankrupt it either.
-
- Technology will soon give us more power to erase the
future, or so technologists such as Bill Joy worry. And one body in
particular
- government - has become efficient at using technology to burden the
future.
-
- Think about our behavior over the past four years. We
have cut taxes but increased spending, benefiting us but burdening our
kids. We have relaxed the control of greenhouse emissions, creating cheaper
energy for us but astronomically higher costs for our kids, if they are
to avoid catastrophic climatic change. We have waged an effectively
unilateral
war against Iraq, giving some a feeling of resolve but engendering three
generations of angry souls focused upon a single act of revenge: killing
Americans. And we have suffocated stem cell research through absurdly
restrictive
policies, giving the sanctimonious ground upon which to rally, while
guaranteeing
that kids with curable diseases will suffer unnecessary deaths. In each
case, we have burdened children - that one group that can't complain -
so as to supposedly benefit those of us who do.
-
- This is the shameful application of a simple political
truth: The future doesn't vote. And when tomorrow's generations get their
turn at the polls, they won't be able to punish those who failed to
consider
their interests. The cost of shifting burdens to the future is thus quite
small to us, even if it is quite large to them. And we, or the politicians
representing us, happily follow this calculus.
-
- This isn't the first time a government has imposed costs
on others. But when it comes to other issues, there is often resistance.
When a government burdens its own people, they respond either by defending
their interests or, if disenfranchised, by demanding the vote. When a
government
imposes costs internationally, that drives diplomatic negotiations or,
failing that, war.
-
- But future generations can't picket. They can't demand
a vote. And the only war on us that they will wage is one of hatred when
they recognize what we have done. If the game of politics is to decide
which ox to gore, then our politicians, both Republican and Democrat, have
finally found the perfectly gorable ox.
-
- It may always have been like this. I don't believe in
"golden age" histories; the past was not always better than the
present. But somehow it seems that we have lost an ethic. When your
grandfather
spoke of building a better world for you than he knew himself, you believed
him. And when you look into the eyes of any 1-year-old child, you may
understand
what he meant.
-
- Which makes it even harder to understand how we've become
who we are. The Me Generation - which elected the first two presidents
to have actively avoided military service (Clinton and Bush) and which
will decide this election, too - is in charge, but it has taken its name
much too seriously. Gone is the sense of duty that made so compelling
Kennedy's
demand "ask what you can do for your country." We don't even
ask what we, as a nation, can do for our kids. The rhetoric of
self-interest
so deeply pervades politics that an ideal as fundamental as building a
better future has been lost.
-
- As I've framed this issue, my point may seem critical
of the Republicans (the only next-generation-aware policy for them,
arguably,
is abortion). The president's policies burden the next generation because
it's convenient to do so. But I don't mean to praise the Democrats. They
don't defend the next generation against these policies because it would
be inconvenient.
-
- In his primary bid for his party's presidential
nomination,
John Edwards urged audiences, "Think about how much we have lost in
just four years." It was a powerful sentiment, properly stated. But
against the rhetoric of both parties today, a better thought might be this:
Think about how much we have taken, and continue to take. And how has it
become so easy?
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