The Liberty Report is joined by Kristin Soltis Anderson, author of The Selfie Vote: How Millennials Are Leading America. What are younger people concerned about and how can they be reached with the message of Liberty?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
The Liberty Report is joined by Kristin Soltis Anderson, author of The Selfie Vote: How Millennials Are Leading America. What are younger people concerned about and how can they be reached with the message of Liberty?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
The Liberty Report is joined by Kristin Soltis Anderson, author of The Selfie Vote: How Millennials Are Leading America. What are younger people concerned about and how can they be reached with the message of Liberty?
Be sure to visit http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com for more libertarian commentary.
We have an important guest today, an author who's written, I don't know how to describe the book, but it's involving millennials.
And the author of this is Kristen Soltis Anderson.
And she wrote a book by the title, The Selfie Vote.
And Kristen, it's nice to have you with us today.
Thank you very much for having me on the show, Dr. Paul.
Well, very good.
Well, we have a lot of questions.
We want to learn something here.
So I would like to start off right now with this.
I want to have you define millennials.
Sometimes I look it up and they give different definitions, you know, and different days.
And we figure, am I one of those?
And that sort of thing.
So sort of define that and tell me what your goal of your book was.
Millennials are roughly defined as people who are born in the 1980s and 1990s.
There is a little bit of debate, as you mentioned, about when the start and end dates for the generation are, but as a rough way of defining it, if you were born in the 80s and 90s, you are technically a millennial, which is a big, very broad generation.
I mean, we're talking, you know, tens of millions of people fall into that generation.
And this is a very important generation in terms of politics and in terms of ideas.
Consumer brands are trying to figure out how to reach millennials because this is such a big consumer base.
You know, nonprofits and employers are trying to figure out how do I tap into the values of this generation.
And in politics, people are trying to figure out how do we understand what this generation thinks and feels about where our country should be headed because they make up an awful lot of voters out there.
Had the election in 2012 been an election just of people over the age of 30, Republicans would be in the White House.
But because Republicans and conservatives have struggled a little bit to win over younger voters in recent elections, this is why I wrote the selfie vote to try to give folks who lean further to the right an understanding of what this generation cares about and how they can try to win them over.
Well, you know, the first question that occurred to me when I saw your book and read your book was, and you just stated that you want to figure out what the millennials are thinking and where they're leading us.
And I've been involved for a little bit in politics and talking to young people, but it seems like we got the things sort of, I don't know whether it's mixed up or something because I'm trying to help guide the millennials.
I'm not looking.
I'm not really looking for information.
I mean, somebody just got out of high school or college.
They've been influenced by liberalism and socialism and all.
And I'm not looking how they're leaning.
I want to know how I can guide them so that they'll lead the country in a way that is very important to me.
Oh, I think that's a good point.
I mean, certainly, as somebody who works in the polling field, this is a debate that we deal with all the time.
You know, if people believe one thing and you as a leader believe something different than what the polls show, should you represent the views of the people or should you try to lead the people and persuade them to come around to your point of view?
And what I argue in the selfie vote is that it's really important for conservatives and people who care about liberty to make the case to younger voters in a different way than they have in the past.
To talk to younger voters about not just why the principles matter, but what those principles mean in their day-to-day lives, so that when you have young people who are coming out of colleges and universities where maybe they haven't heard this message before, they can understand much more clearly why their hopes and dreams are best served by an agenda that creates more liberty for them.
Daniel?
Kristen, yeah, when I think of millennials, I particularly think of social media and the use of social media, which is an incredibly liberating platform.
It is certainly a democratizing platform.
This very show is essentially being put up on a social media site.
I'm a regular user of Twitter.
I think it's remarkable, but it is also a sort of a revolutionary communications tool.
This is the shortest spurt of words you can imagine to convey sometimes very complex thoughts.
Would you characterize as sort of the rise of millennials coinciding with the rise of a shorter intention span?
And is that something that you address in the book?
Is that something that we have to understand?
I mean, you think about these 40-page think tank papers that I'm sure nobody reads anymore.
So how would you say communicating has changed in the age of Twitter?
I think it's important to note that even, you know, a couple of decades ago, the 40-page think tank papers weren't being read by your average voter or your young voter then either.
That right now, what's kind of exciting is that we have so many more tools to convey a message rather than just having to rely on the mainstream media.
If you're someone that's interested in politics and policy, you have new ways to communicate about the things that you stand for.
Yes, it's much more concise than a 40-page think tank paper.
But I think there's real opportunity there.
It's not just millennials, although in some ways millennials lead these trends.
They sort of start the train moving and then everyone else jumps on board.
The reason why social media is so compelling and so important nowadays isn't just because it's brief, but also because it's in many ways very authentic.
It allows people to feel that they have a direct connection with leaders, with celebrities, with thinkers, with influencers, and it allows them to communicate directly with their friends and family about politics in a way that might have been more challenging even a decade ago.
It used to be that you'd have to have these conversations over Thanksgiving dinner with friends at Happy Hour, but now you can tell 100, 200, 300 of your friends all at once where you stand on an issue.
And I think that's what makes social media so valuable and important when it comes to conveying these ideas to millennials.
You know, the libertarian has a tendency not to like the ideas of groups and being bunched together.
Is there any downside to being a millennial and stereotyped?
Libertarians tend to see the whole world as individuals.
Now, some people say, well, that's too self-centered and that's no good.
You can't do that.
But the world has been both punished and a lot of harm comes from punishing groups of people.
Well, you belong to this group or that group.
And it's not an age group.
It's a different thing.
And sometimes they're, you know, rewarded because they belong to a group.
And a libertarian argued you should do neither.
You should neither punish nor help and give special privileges to any one group.
But what about the stereotyping?
You point out the important reason why you need to know this, especially maybe if you're in a business, and maybe there are politicians that would find this very helpful.
But do you recognize any downsides of you being in a millennial and people steering time?
Oh, he's in that generation.
I don't want to have any part of him.
Does that go on?
Absolutely, it goes on.
And there's a real risk there.
Given that the millennial generation is such a broad definition, Right now I'm in my early 30s and I am technically a millennial, but so is someone who's just entering college with whom I probably have very little in common.
The thing that really binds the millennial generation together is that this is a generation that has come of age in an era when the internet is just the norm.
Originally the generation was called the digital natives.
But there is, I think, a lot of negative stereotyping out there about millennials that I try to debunk a bit in the book, where people assume, you know, millennials that they're lazy, that they're self-absorbed.
I mean, there are any number of things where you can read articles of people complaining about how horrible millennials are.
And I try to make the case in the book that, look, this is, it is a generation of a lot of individuals who like to be very different.
They don't trust big institutions.
They like smaller brands.
They like being, you know, defining their own personal brand, I guess, as very individualistic.
They like working together to solve problems, but that doesn't mean that they like the government to solve problems.
So there are a lot of, it's a much more complicated generation than I think sometimes people give it credit for.
And I try to tell the story of that complexity in the book rather than just caving into this idea that all millennials are the same.
Kristen, I think it's interesting what you said earlier about the authenticity of message, authenticity of communication.
And I'm sure you probably followed it at least from distance, but Dr. Paul's 2008 and 2012 campaigns, I think, really demonstrated how a campaign driven by a coherent philosophy that is articulated in an uncompromising form can appeal to millennials.
I think they appreciate the authenticity.
This is what I'm about.
Now, looking at the Republicans now vying for office, do you think they're getting that message or are they too mired in talking points or how can I appeal?
How would you grade some of the candidates in this respect?
Oddly enough, and I think for a whole host of reasons, Donald Trump is ultimately not the candidate that is going to win over the millennial generation.
But you can argue that the way he communicates is, you know, it is that kind of unvarnished, you know, it's at least the illusion of authenticity.
I think maybe a better example would be Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, where he holds a host of views that I completely disagree with.
But you don't doubt for a second that the things Bernie Sanders is saying are things that he actually believes.
And you're seeing in the polls on the Democratic side that there's very little enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton among millennials and that they've started to gravitate toward Bernie Sanders.
I think that's sort of the latest manifestation of this fact that when Dr. Paul ran for president, he had the same sort of phenomenon where lots of young voters thought it was refreshing that someone was saying things that they truly believed.
And it's sad that that's viewed as sort of a unique thing in politics nowadays.
But it's very refreshing to millennials who just don't trust big institutions.
They don't trust big brands.
They don't trust the media.
And they don't trust things that sound like they've heard them before, like they're too rehearsed.
They want people to be authentic and they'd rather have a candidate with whom they disagree on some issues, but at least they feel like they know where that person stands than someone who tries to put on kind of a nice show, but whether you feel like you might not be able to trust them at all.
Don't you think there's a dramatic difference between the individual and use Bernie Sanders as an example?
And I know him well and we've worked together, so I know what's going on there.
But I think of Bernie somewhat like, and you compared him to me on our strategy or the way we proceed.
But we generally aren't too interested in the vehicles and say, well, what we need to do is da-da-da, you know, and use the internet in a certain way.
Why Millennials Are Risk Averse00:08:15
But you know what?
My biggest surprise was, since I was not internet savvy, was in 2007 when I really got involved in national politics and campaigning, was that it was so unbelievably spontaneous.
I didn't have to understand that.
I used to kid, as a physician, I knew what a virus was all about and it was very dangerous, but all of a sudden it went viral.
So I had to learn these terms.
But I didn't have to worry about it.
This to me was the magnificent thing about the technology.
And it just seems like the principle is the overwhelming issue because this is why I find it fascinating to go to young, talk to young people, is their minds are not closed.
And I know I get a lot of grief.
Oh, you speak highly of the young people and you mention it that somehow you can't say everybody in that age group is all going to be very positive.
But I think young people are so fascinating.
I don't want to put them in a category.
I want to be careful with that.
But it just seems like, you know, concentrating on a philosophy seems like a very important part of not even worrying about some of this.
It's absolutely right that good content is far more important than the vehicle that you deliver it through.
And so if you have an old message, if you have a message that doesn't resonate, if you have ideas that people don't care about that aren't interesting, that aren't valuable, then you can use all the social media you want and no one will care.
So I think content is king.
Ideas are king.
And I think, you know, that everything will grow organically if you have a message and ideas that are powerful for people.
Another question?
Well, I was wondering, actually, maybe delving into the dark side a little bit, see what you might think about this.
One thing that struck me when I saw this a few weeks ago about millennials, and it's troubling.
And I don't know, maybe you have some thoughts on it or maybe you don't.
But among millennials, I saw that 60% support sending troops to Syria.
But then in the same pool, 62% said they personally would never join the military and not interested in going.
How can we counter this idea?
How can to convince young people that there are costs, both human and financial, to war, that it is not a sort of a tweet or a video game or something?
This seems like a real challenge to what Dr. Paul and I do all the time.
This has been an interesting, you know, if you look at the statistics on who joins the military and how likely someone is to know someone who is serving in the military, those patterns have really shifted over the last few decades in the United States to where now a significant number of people in the millennial generation don't necessarily know someone who is their age, who is serving or has served.
And so that's where you can see these poll results.
They're pretty divergent.
You know, we, on the one hand, want to see action.
On the other hand, we don't necessarily want to be the ones going on the front lines.
Public opinion on foreign policy is really volatile and it's particularly volatile with younger voters.
That's a big part of why I specifically say in the selfie vote, I try to avoid talking about it.
Because say during 2014, when I was writing the bulk of the book, you know, poll after poll was showing that young voters really wanted a much more limited role for the U.S. in terms of foreign policy.
They preferred a trimmer military, that they just weren't as confident about America's role overseas.
But then as you saw the rise of ISIS, I began to see poll numbers showing these really dramatic changes.
And so I wanted to be sure that I wasn't trying to draw big conclusions about this generation on issues where the public opinion was shifting so much.
But certainly, I think the rise of ISIS has kind of scrambled the issue mix about how millennials think about these issues.
And you can really divide the millennial generation into two groups.
Again, it's such a big, a big generation.
You can look at folks who are my age, older millennials.
We remember 9-11, but we also remember the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how around 2006, 2007, you had the surge because things were going so badly.
And it's those older millennials that still remain really skeptical of American intervention, the idea that America should be wielding strength in the world.
It's younger millennials who maybe don't have those same kind of memories who are coming of age where the rise of ISIS is the first foreign policy thing that's really sticking in their minds.
And so their views are being shaped by just a different set of current events.
Yeah, I don't find it too strange or unusual that these attitudes would change with young people on it because they're getting their opinion from the major media, even though they're technophobes and they look at all their cell phones and all this.
The major media really can put out the propaganda where all of a sudden the point you make is, and what Kristen makes is they did shift their viewpoint, which is a challenge.
But I want to finish up, Kristen, and it's a bit of an economic question, but it's also dealing with the millennials.
I read an article that said millennials present a difficulty for people selling stuff.
You know, their tastes might be different.
And besides, you can't assume they're going to buy a car.
They buy them and then they quit and they're not interested in cars and they don't buy houses, so therefore the furniture market is going to be different.
And the article presented this as a characteristic of the millennials that they don't like cars and don't like houses.
But I don't know how anybody could possibly talk about that if they didn't talk about debt, student debt, and the economy and unemployment.
I happen to think no matter what the statistics shows and say, well, millennials don't like cars and houses.
I think they do.
I think what we need is to lead the millennials.
We need a different sort of education in our college system.
We need more independent thinking to show that the reason they aren't buying cars and houses is they're flat out broke and the debt's been dumped on them.
And I think that is so different than saying, oh, the millennials, it looks like they don't like cars and houses anymore.
How would you respond to that opinion of mine?
What I think really defines this generation and that lumps or that links together the not buying cars and the not buying houses with the economic situation and the debt they face is this is a generation that has become very risk averse.
They've come of age in an era where they were told, hey, you know, saving up your money in the stock market's a smart idea.
You should do that and take out those loans for college and get that college education and that'll put you on the path for success.
And look, your parents' generation, they all bought houses and that was a good investment and you should do that.
And slowly but surely, they saw that all of those things started to fall apart.
They saw the financial crisis.
They saw their parents' homes get foreclosed on.
And they took out all that college debt and then found that that degree may not have been as valuable as they believed it would be.
So now they're faced with all of this debt and they're thinking all of these things I was told were responsible, buying a home, buying a car, living in the suburbs.
Maybe that's not as responsible as I was told.
So it's not that they don't want cars or don't want houses.
You're absolutely right that for many of them, it's just that they can't afford these things.
They can't put together the down payment on a car or a house because they're facing such tough economic times.
But they're also, I think, pretty scarred by the difficult economic times that they've come of age in.
And so for them, making these big investments, it's like making a commitment.
You're committing to a car.
You're committing to a house.
When, if you can just rent month to month or take an Uber somewhere, you haven't made that commitment, which feels less risky.
And I think that's why you're seeing some of these behaviors from young people.
It really is, as you mentioned, linked back to the economic situation they face, and particularly for many, the student loan issue.
Cringe-Worthy Political Groupings00:01:46
Right.
Kristen, I want to thank you very much for being with us today.
I found it very fascinating, and I'm sure a lot of other people will be looking at it.
And they're going to be looking at it for pragmatic political reasons, I think, as much as anything.
And I don't think you deny that there is some political advice in here for some candidates.
But anyway, thank you very much for being with us today, Kristen.
Thank you.
Okay.
And I want to say to the audience, I want to thank you for being with us today at the Liberty Report.
And I hope you come back soon.
But I hope you find this discussion interesting.
And one point that I tried to make, and it's not so much that it disproves anything that is particularly written in the book or anything, but I just sort of cringe at putting people in groups.
But I thought Kristen answered that question rather well because, you know, there is a danger in stereotyping people.
But the principles of liberty depend on individuals and not on groups.
We don't have any rights because we belong to a group.
We should never be penalized.
And I guess in theory, I belong to the silent generation of the 50s.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that because I never wanted to be very silent.
So I don't see, I often wonder who coins these terms?
Who coins the newness in our language?
This is a word that might be used for 100 years.
And oh no, you can't use that word anymore.
It's politically incorrect.
Who has the authority to do this?
And why do we all roll over and say, oh, no, I don't want to, you know, it's the political corrective police that on the media that tends to do this.
But I cringe when people want to bring things together and lump them in groups.
But nevertheless, I think people will find the book of interest.