Because that’s what he likes about it: the willingness of freeborn citizens to be strapped in to the baby seats of Big Nanny. Ty’Sheoma Bethea’s application for federal dependency justifies the ruling class’ belief in its own indispensability. That’s why it got read out in Congress. Almost two years later, in a strikingly whiney response even by his own standards, Obama pleaded to a liberal interviewer that he was merely the president, not the king.⁴ Well, how did large numbers of people such as young Miss Bethea get so confused on that point? For both the ruling class and a huge number of its subjects, it is not just routine but (as Obama suggested) somehow admirable to look to central government to supply your needs—shelter, sustenance, clothing, medication, painless sedatives both pharmaceutical and figurative. To Ty’Sheoma Bethea and her school chums, it sounds liberating: if the benevolent state takes care of all your needs, you’re free to concentrate on “changing the world.” In reality, you’ve already changed it—from a state of raw, messy liberty to one on the path to despotic insolvency. What would be the price of a gallon of paint once it’s been routed through a massive centralized education bureaucracy?

For the moment that remains a purely hypothetical thought. On the other hand, the first major item of congressional business after the Democrats’ midterm shellacking in 2010 was to pass a “Food Safety” Act, among whose items was federal regulation of schoolhouse bake sales.⁵ If the students of Dillon ever rouse themselves to do something about their peeling paint and train-rattled windows by selling blueberry pies and cranberry muffins, they can at least do so knowing their baked goods are now under the supervision of the Imperial Court in Washington.

IT’S NOT HOW YOU QUIT, IT’S WHERE YOU START

“I think of Ty’Sheoma Bethea,” said Barack Obama. I think I think of her rather more than he does these days, and I wonder how two generations of American students came to think like this at all.

I doubt I’ll be invited to give the commencement address in Dillon any time soon. Even at the best of times, “upbeat and inspirational” isn’t really my bag. I went to one of those old-school English boys’ institutions where instead of prioritizing “self-esteem” the object was to lower it to imperceptible levels by the end of the first week. Still, I’ve spoken at enough American schools to know that you’re supposed to jolly ’em along with something uplifting like “You can be anything you want to be.” Here’s the problem, and here’s what I would tell the student body of Dillon in the unlikely event they book me for a motivational speech:

You can’t always be anything you want to be. I wanted to be a great tap-dancer. Instead I’m a mediocre tap-dancer. But that’s my problem. Your problem is that my generation and your teachers’ generation have put a huge obstacle in the way of you being anything you want to be: We’ve spent your future. Generationally speaking, yours truly, the principal, the guidance counselor, the school board, the old, the late middle-aged and the early middle-aged have cleaned you out before you’ve got going.

“It’s about the future of all our children.” And the future of all our children is that you’ll be paying off the past of all your grandparents. In the assisted-suicide phase of western democracy, voters are seduced by politicians who bribe them with government lollipops, but they’re not willing to pay the cost of those lollipops. Solution: Kick it down the road, and stick it to the next generation. That’s you.

So government has spent your future. This is the biggest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the world. Look at the way your parents and grandparents live: it’s not going to be like that for you. You’re going to have a smaller house, and a smaller car—if not a basement apartment and a bus ticket. But thanks a bundle, it worked out great for us. We of the Greatest Generation, the Boomers, and Generation X salute you, the plucky members of the Brokest Generation, the Gloomers, and Generation Y, as in “Why the hell did you old coots do this to us?”, which is what you’re going to be asking in a few years’ time.

You’re being lined up for a twenty-first-century America of more government, more regulation, less opportunity, and less prosperity—and you should be mad about it: when you come to take your seat at the American table (to use another phrase politicians are fond of), you’ll find the geezers, the boomers, and the Gen X-ers have all gone to the bathroom, and you’re the only one sitting there when the waiter presents the check. That’s you: Generation Checks.