Ron Fournier’s article in yesterday’s The Atlantic online, “The Outsiders: How Can Millennials Change Washington If They Hate It?” is well worth a careful read. Based on surveys and interviews, he describes Millennials as a generation of highly engaged, other-oriented, creative young people who are disdainful of government as an ineffective instrument. They want to do good but don’t see government as a place where it can be done–just at a time when, with the retirement of Baby Boomers, government needs a huge number of new recruits. When they think of public policy, many Millennials are looking for something new, something beyond the lumbering government of today.

I’m sympathetic. But often, in the here and now, even before any future reforms, government is the only way to do what needs to be done, as ineffective as it might be. See, for instance, Timothy Sherrat’s “Why We Need Government After All.”

And even more immediately: whether or not you care for government, it surely cares–increasingly–about you and what you do, even in your “private” life and in “private” organizations. That’s one big reason for the increasing number of clashes between government rules and religious organizations, as their desire to be faithful to their animating convictions comes into conflict with the government’s expanding web of homogenizing and secular requirements.

Millennials who care about the flourishing of civil society ought to care deeply about current government, even if–especially if–government is not doing what it should.