Rebels serves many purposes. After all, our first president was a rebel. Rebels can bring about freedom and justice. They do so by adhering to the virtues of courage and humility towards the elders that brought them into existence.
However, rebellion can also be destructive. “Rebels without a cause” do not rebel in order to promote justice and truth. They rebel because they instinctively dislike their society. Perhaps they will find themselves fighting against something truly awful as the radicals of the 60s found themselves coincidentally fighting with Civil Rights leaders. But fighting against something bad does not necessarily make you a good person. Perhaps you are just as destructive as the evil person you passionately hate. To this day both the communists and the fascists hate each other. I think that every sane person can agree that neither of these groups is desirable.
Throughout history, rebellion in teenage boys and young adults has served a very distinct purpose; it has turned them into men. Benjamin Franklin was a rebel. As a young man he escaped the service of his brother and travelled to Pennsylvania to find work. He then created a calendar of virtues to practice living a good life and established a printing business that allowed him to retire at the young age of forty. John Brown and Harriet Tubman were also rebels who fought against the injustice of slavery with a dedication to scripture. During WWII young boys were rebels. They would lie about their age to fight for their country.
Bucking the system to pursue virtue in accordance with faith, reason, courage, and a respect for the ancestors who made your life possible is admirable. In our decadent age, however, rebellion has taken quite a different turn. It has taken the form of binge-drinking, bogus gender identification, and incessant whining. Rather than turning people into men, modern rebellion has turned teenagers and young adults into perpetual children, shunning discipline and respect in favor of social media pontificating and a disdain for standards. This is echoed in the incessant demand for the god of tolerance to reign supreme in the public square. Unlike the tolerance of John Locke, the new tolerance is hateful, seeking to destroy anyone who believes in standards. The new standard is standardlesseness.
Perhaps the new rebellion is the cause of the high divorce rates in our society. The thrill seekers can never be content with a marriage which has lost its youthful passion. Instead they must seek out new passion for the sake of their happiness. What about the happiness of their children? What about the happiness of their spouse? What about the happiness of society? What about the happiness of God? The indulgence of the new rebels causes many to disregard these questions.
The old rebellion was sacrificial and manly. It was not rebellion to incessantly indulge yourself in pleasure. Certainly it entailed mistakes and even vice, but in the past, rebelling also meant that you had a vision. To pursue a vision takes discipline. “Rebels without a cause” are not admirable. They are lost and visionless. They attach themselves to grievances without proper evaluation. They seek to break taboos for the mere sake of breaking taboos.
In the end, the new rebellion brings about the death of man by making him weak and over-indulgent.
