While reading the book, The Happy Christian, I came across the story of Professor Jack Chambliss at Valencia College. Each year he begins the class by asking his students to write a ten-minute essay on what the American dream looks like to them and what they want the federal government to do to help them achieve that dream. I would recommend that you ask young people you know to do the same. I think you will be shocked.

The professor says that about 10 percent of the students wanted government to leave them alone. In other words, they didn’t want to be taxed too much or regulated too much. In other words, they wanted government to just give them a chance to pursue their dreams without major hindrances. I would suggest to you that a generation or two ago, that percentage would be much higher than 10 percent.

Sadly over 80 percent of the students said “that the American Dream to them meant a house and a job and plenty of money for retirement, and vacations and things like that.” Then they began to describe what the federal government should do for them. They wanted “free health care, they wanted the government to pay for their tuition. They wanted government to pay for the down payment on their house.” Many of them wanted government “to give them a job.”

I could go on, but you get the idea. These college students wanted everything, and they wanted the federal government to give it to them. If you thought that the Baby Boom Generation was the Entitlement Generation, you haven’t met the latest crop of college students. More and more commentators are calling them the Entitlement Generation or the Gimme Generation or even the New Me Generation. These future voters and taxpayers have an overwhelming sense of entitlement and expect the government to provide everything they need.

This is not the American Dream. It certainly isn’t what Americans in the last few centuries described as the American Dream. It is a false worldview that promises lots of benefits without any hard work or initiative. Frankly, it’s a mindset of entitlement on steroids.