onto their children, mostly the older half of the Millennials (born in the 1980s). These older Millennials are now in their 30s and some of them have begun running for political office. The value they place on strong families and a healthy social fabric is clearly seen in many of their platforms. Critical theory and postmodernist thinking is clearly absent from the vast majority of these platforms. This has created the interesting situation where in today's political field, you are more likely to find a socially radical candidate in their 60s or 70s rather than in their 30s or 40s.
The Return of Critical Theory Radicalism, From 2008 to the Present While most baby boomers gave up the radicalism of their student days, a minority of them continued to dream of radically transforming society, and their ideas sometimes got even more radical with time. For example, some of the radical boomer students became academics, and they used their academic work to further develop critical theory and postmodern theory. Therefore, while mainstream Western society enjoyed a prolonged period of peace and prosperity during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, ideas even more radical (and perhaps even more destructive) than those of earlier critical theorists like Marcuse and Foucault were brewing, out of sight of the mainstream public. The fact that these ideas developed in a way that was closed off from mainstream scrutiny meant that they were increasingly out of touch with reality. It also meant that there was no 142
