People haven't been fighting the same battles for 40 years.

[otherlander]

People have been fighting the same battles since the beginning of civilization. History will look back on us, the ancient American empire, and shake their heads at how silly we were, how self-important, to think that anything could have changed in such a short time.

The activists of the 1960's didn't invent any new issues. Rebelling against leaders who want to send the many to die for the powerful few? Look at what Smedley Butler wrote back during the first world war. Workers struggling against the people who control capital? Before the industrial revolution, before the slave rebellions in America pre-Civil War, it's all been going on since the days of kings and serfs. We can't just choose to "move on" to new issues. We'll still have these ones to deal with. And at that point we can do two things: a) continue to fight for them, or b) give up.

Don't buy into the self-important myth. Hundreds of years from now, when the American empire is gone, what difference will a twenty-year age difference have made? If we let this isolate us from other people who agree with us, history will forget us. We won't have changed anything worthy of remembering if we make blanket statements about generations instead of looking for individuals who share our ideas. America belongs to everyone who fights to improve it.