Alert: old people now youth experts

Robert Redford, famous for such meaningful fare as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," hopes that his latest movie, "Lions for Lambs" will encourage young people to find their political voices. In the movie, Redford plays an idealistic professor who meets a brilliant but cynical student and tries to save from his apathy.

"The future is going to belong to young people, and young people have to take command of their voice," Redford said at the movie's showing at a film festival in Rome this week. "Are they going to become politically active or are they going to move away from it because they are disgusted, they are disillusioned and they don't respect it because there is no morality in leadership?"

Why a 70 year-old actor and filmmaker believes that he is an expert on young people escapes me, but he's hardly the only fogy to sound off on my generation's supposed lack of fervor. Thomas Friedman, in an Oct. 10 column for the New York Times, opined that "America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q."

I've never starred in or directed a movie. I've never been published in the New York Times. But I've done something that neither Redford nor Friedman can claim: I've spent the past two years of my life listening to college students. I couldn't avoid it if I tried - I am a college student.

We are neither Friedman's Generation Quiet, nor Redford's apathetic cynics. We are conservatives and liberals, Marxists and libertarians. Some of us are obsessed with politics; some of us are too busy studying, working or drinking to care. A few are disillusioned, often with the people of Redford's and Friedman's generations. Some of us believe that we have to change the world; most of us realize how much we have been blessed to live in this great nation. And we certainly don't need Redford, the heartthrob of my mother's generation, to help us find our voices.

Redford and Friedman have a good reason for wanting to lump all young people together in a quiet, apathetic package - it allows them to pat themselves on the back for their own perceived goodness, while ignoring their approaching irrelevancy. By castigating my generation for its over-reliance on Facebook and blogs as tools of change, they can think of themselves as paragons of political virtue for getting angry in their youth and staying angry now.

Clearly, both men have political agendas: an end to the war in Iraq and greater focus on the dangers of apocalyptic global warming. I sincerely doubt that Redford and Friedman would stand up and cheer because a young conservative like me has a political voice. And they certainly wouldn't be happy if the majority of my peers took my side on the issues. Neither Friedman nor Redford seems particularly concerned with our actual voices; they just want my generation to echo them.

It's too soon to tell what my generation will be known for and too soon for our aging predecessors to tell us what we should be doing. These prophets of conventional wisdom believe that my peers and I ought to be recycling both their ideas and their tactics. I hope my fellow college students will put their headphones back on and tune Redford and Friedman out - just don't forget to join my new Facebook group, "Students United Against Old Fogies."