Trust Them to Grow Up

I see a lot to like in The Wall Street Journal; every now and then I see something that makes no sense. Mark W. Davis writes in today's Journal that the GOP is doing a poor job of reaching the young: Generations X and Y and the Millennials. Suppose he is correct; why is it something to worry about?

Do you know this famous quotation? I love it because I've lived it.

He who is not a Socialist at 19, has no heart. He who is still a Socialist at 30, has no brain.

It is variously attributed to Winston Churchill, Otto von Bismarck, Woodrow Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, Georges Clemenceau, and Aristide Briand. The earliest citation I can find for it is François Guisot (1787-1874). So many people have observed the wisdom in this statement, and endorsed or borrowed it, that the statement has become axiomatic.

Certainly the young are Democrats. Is that any reason to expect these same individuals to still be Democrats 10-15 years from now? Of course not; there is every reason to expect them to mature into conservatives, as so many of us have done.