Last week, the Missouri House of Representatives passed a budget that eliminated aid to local libraries amid a dispute over the constitutionality of a state ban on “explicit material” in public schools. Last month, legislators in Tennessee approved a law restricting drag performances on public property or anywhere minors might be present. Over the past few years, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has presided over a series of policies attempting to eradicate critical race theory and other ideas associated with the political left from school curriculums.
The controversies over these and similar measures don’t merely demonstrate how acrimonious today’s culture wars have become. They also reveal how much politics has become an intergenerational battle, with older traditionalists against younger progressives.
The idea of a yawning generation gap tends to evoke associations with the bygone 1960s. But Americans are actually much more politically divided by age today than they were when Bob Dylan was warning the nation’s parents that “your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.” In the 1968 presidential election, voters under the age of 30 preferred Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey to Republican opponent Richard Nixon by 9 percentage points, according to Gallup, while voters aged 50 or more opted for Nixon by 6 points.
