“If you’re not a Democrat by the time you are 20, you have no heart. But if you’re not a… “If you’re not a Democrat by the time you are 20, you have no heart. But if you’re not a Republican by the time you’re 40, you have no brain.”

My Uncle Dick said this right in the middle of a conversation in which I pointed out the obvious flaws in his logic and the obvious flaws in his president.

He shrugged me off and told me to wait 10 years.

I’m not bothered by this event. I have resigned myself to the fact most people have their minds made up about an issue and don’t really want to listen to any conflicting points of view.

People’s shifts toward becoming more conservative as they age are what bother me. It’s not simply that both generation and party-affiliation cycle. The baby boomers constitute much of the Republican Party. These are the same people who, earlier in life, were out there in the streets demonstrating against the Vietnam War and taking part in the civil rights protests of the ’60s.

There is something that has happened to this generation. How did they forget the message of Vietnam? How did the generation switch sides from dove to hawk? Why did their values go from liberal to conservative?

What I’ve experienced is that when people get out of college, start buying houses and raising families, there is a whole new list of concerns that come into play. People become concerned with supporting a family, and they become afraid that their children will be exposed to violence and hatred.

The Republican Party does an excellent job of capitalizing on this concern for financial stability and turning it into greed — the greed of caring about your family and only your family without thinking about others or looking at the bigger picture.

They also do an excellent job of offering censorship and limitations on freedoms of speech as an easy answer for keeping your children protected.

But these easy answers won’t solve the problems in the long run. Sacrificing the good of your society and world for temporary personal benefit won’t help you in the long run.

Getting a little bit back in lowered taxes, but severely damaging the future financial solvency of the nation is not even in the middle class’s best interests.

The stagnant minimum wage and lack of standardized health care are also weakening the structure of our society by creating a larger gap between the rich and the poor, thereby weakening the middle class itself. It seems that people don’t realize how much they are hurting their own position by giving in to their own fears and greed.

In the next few years, I’ll be starting my career. I hope to get married and settle down. I too will be faced with a choice of a free society or a temporarily secure family.

I will not be taking the same route of most of my colleagues. I will probably be working in sales or marketing, unlike many of the other writers here who will be going on to full-time jobs at other newspapers.

In doing this, I’m not going to face the harsh realities of the world — poverty, corruption, hunger and greed — that my fellow writers may investigate and be exposed to. It will be easier for me to close my eyes or put on blinders than it will be for them.

Because of this situation, I’m going to have to make a conscious effort not to change much. I will have to try to not ignore the evils of the world and continue to fight them.

I’m going to try and not lose ‘College Dan,’ that idealistic part of myself that believes we can make this world a better place. I hope that I’m not going to lose the idea that the government’s role is to serve its people, not its money or its ruling class.

And I hope the people reading this column — when they move on from college and eventually go off to their suburban homes and white picket fences — don’t forget the lessons they learned in college. I hope they don’t give up on their dreams.

Send your hopes and dreams to Dan at [email protected].