Hey, Young People: Why Aren't You Protesting?

On a range of issues from immigration to unions, polls suggest today's twentysomethings are lefties. Yet here we are, in the midst of a government shutdown, and the millennials aren't coming out against it. "They should be surrounding the Capitol to defend Obamacare and blast the Republicans for denying food stamps to millions of poor people," Michael Kazin writes in the New Republic. "It’s our government, they ought to declare. Boehner, Cantor, and their band of militants have no right to bankrupt or shut it down."

Instead, it's just Tea Partiers who seem to have the wherewithal to make their voices heard. One issue for young liberals may be that ObamaCare hasn't generated a lot of passion, thanks to its watered-down version of universal health care; another is mistrust of the federal government. "But to laugh, anxiously, as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Gail Collins eviscerate Ted Cruz and his ilk does nothing to beat back the danger a determined, well-funded mass conservative movement poses now to the imperfect but vital reforms Obama and the Democrats have been able to pass," Kazin writes. "Don’t fret, organize." Click for the full piece. (More Millenial Generation stories.)