How Old Fogies Can Save America

Forget Washington—America's salvation lies with its senior citizens, writes David Brooks. He wants them to form a sort of tea party of their own, not to accrue more financial benefits but to return some they already have. Federal spending tilts too heavily toward the old instead of the young, writes Brooks, and "it now seems clear that the only way the US is going to avoid crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change."

"It may seem unrealistic—to expect a generation to organize around the cause of nonselfishness," Brooks writes in the New York Times. "But in the private sphere, you see it every day. Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize. The elderly. They are our future." (More elderly stories.)