Well, I find it odd in all this wondering about "what's wrong with the kids" that more people aren't paying attention to the fact that in this election you have voters who have never in their lives had a President who wasn't named Bush or Clinton, and no one seems concerned that we've got another Clinton running for office, whose frontrunner status appears entirely generated by the fact that she shares the name of a former President.

Call me wacky, but having the nation's highest position of power dominated by nepotism really doesn't fire the engines of civic engagement. Sure, people over 40 had their chance to vote in an election that didn't have a Bush or a Clinton on the top of the ticket (back in 1984), but the rest of us haven't. And now we've gone even further. We're seeing our first crop of voters who've never even seen the election of a President not named Bush or Clinton.

Ya think maybe that's contributing to a sense of civic disengagement, and a a widespread cynical sense that it's all a rigged game?

Kay,

I think you've drastically misread Courtney's article. Here's a tiny excerpt that makes the point:

This is not terribly surprising considering that these clubs are sanctioned and funded (sometimes with upward of thousands of dollars a year) by the school administration through a formal application process. They are structured to legitimize but also to domesticate student passions and actions from the start.

In other words, she's not talking about groups funded like Campus Progress (which I assume gets its funding via the Center for American Progress), but college student groups funded by colleges themselves.

What a depressing argument. It used to be that the left argued at length about the proper relationship between accomodationist, gradualist "inside" politics and disruptive, radical "outside" politics. But the author of this post is happy to blithely dispense with the need for--or even the possibility of--an outside. Apparently "the system" is just fine, and all we need is to get a few clever liberals into the right positions, and everything will be just fine. Social structures, class politics, long-term visions; it's all out the window. We've apparently lost even the idea that there is a difference between an institution which is built and maintained by young militants, and one which is funded and guided by donors and established liberal politicos.

And what a stirring collection of slogans we are presented with. Institutions aren't all bad! Build the people's struggle by building your resume! All high-level positions to the brightest people under 30! Yeah, I'm sure that will make for a thoughtful and visionary left which can't be easily co-opted by Clintonian centrism.

Thanks for continuing this discussion. It's nice to read posts talking about institutional politics, both pro & con. I'd like to address one of your points -- "[Courtney Martin's] argument that working within the system is bad doesn't really ring true to me. After all, in the end, that's how change is made."

It's part of how change is made, but working outside the system -- in addition to working within the system -- provides you with leverage when, say, you help elect Democrats to Congress to end the occupation of Iraq and they keep imploring, "Give us more time." When moderates called on Martin Luther King, Jr. to only work within the system, he replied with his "Letter from Birmingham Jail", a timeless reminder of the importance of civil disobedience:

"You may well ask: 'Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?' You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue...

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern...

"Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in it's application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest...

"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.'...

"So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvery's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime -- the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

"I had hoped that the white moderate would see this need. Perhaps I was too optimistic; perhaps I expected too much."

The full letter can be read here:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf

Thank you chiasmus and Ned, in full agreement.

Activism dance parties! LOLlerskates!!1!OMG!143!

"What a depressing argument. It used to be that the left argued at length about the proper relationship between accomodationist, gradualist "inside" politics and disruptive, radical "outside" politics. But the author of this post is happy to blithely dispense with the need for--or even the possibility of--an outside."

I agree. These days "outsider" politics seems almost exclusively of the scrappy republican variety. THEN we sit around and wonder why the country is moving "to the right." I dare say, it almost makes one wish there was a way to tap into it.

I agree. Martin makes a number of mistakes in her article, and demonstrates a lack of knowledge about how student government budgets are dispersed, the history of progressive funding on campus, and the current state of youth activism both on and off campus.

She's way off base in so many ways.

I'll refer you to the full response I wrote on my blog, Future Majority, which tackles Martin's piece point by point.