Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Last night, all the liberals I follow on Twitter were linking to this Washington Post essay headlined "Penn State, my final loss of faith." I was confused, because the piece was so juvenile and whiny. The author, a 31-year-old war veteran and grad student, blames Baby Boomers for everything wrong in the world. I'm fond of the "blame Baby Boomer" game myself, if done knowingly, but worry that a grown man might believe that only one generation includes people who possess the capability of, say, sodomizing children. It may be nice to think that, but it's just wrong.
Still, Walter Russell Mead was able to squeeze something out of the essay. Mead writes:
No generation gets it perfectly right, and every generation has a lot of diversity in it. But it is hard to avoid the sense, as the Baby Boom generation prepares to transit to overburdened retirement and health care systems, that somehow in our quest for new frontiers, shiny new ideas, and most of all that uncompromising demand for personal fulfillment at all costs — we neglected the most important things.
We are the generation that accepted the behavior of the multi-millionaire CEO with the trophy wife. We are the generation that failed to protect its children from a tide of filth and debasing popular entertainment without parallel in the history of the world. We are a generation that deliberately and cynically passed the cost of its retirement down to its children. We are a generation that preferred and rewarded financial engineering over business construction. We lost control of the borders and failed to make provisions for the illegal immigrants our fecklessness allowed into the country. We embraced a free trade agenda that accelerated the hollowing out of manufacturing and took no thought about what to build in place of the industrial economy we condemned. We shopped until we dropped, and then we got up and shopped some more. On a scale unprecedented in American history, we broke the most solemn vows human beings can make in order to pursue something we deemed much more important than honor and fidelity. We chased chimeras and started at fantasies but failed to take sober measures to prevent a clearly visible and, once upon a time, easily preventable budget crunch.
Mead's a Boomer himself, so he's not saying that all Boomers are this way, just that the generation has produced some problems. What do you think? Is there something to this "blame Boomers" approach or is it just another way of avoiding handling the problems we face?
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Dec '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
"easily preventable budget crunch"? That's like calling the 1906 San Francisco earthquake "a little shaker." There is a bit of truth to blaming the boomers, but I don't think Mead really understands the depth of the problems we face. I also don't know that any one generation can really be blamed for this.
Jan '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
I'm smack in the middle of boomer range, we suck.
However I protest, the great society started before we could vote. The greatest generation laid the foundation.for most of the political mess.
Jun '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
What is the fruit born from the "greatest generation"? The stupid "baby boomers".
Plenty of blame to go around. Some love to complain.
Who cares. Let's fix it.
Dec '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Hearing another screed tossing "free trade" into the mix of thing wrong with this country makes me want to pitch my beer bottle at this guy. Ignorance got us into this mess, and it is possible that no accumulation of knowledge at the time could have prevented it. Such is the nature of markets.
If his contention is that a wise group of overseers would have avoided it, I would point him to the recent publication of Peter Schweizer's new book, "throw them all out." Turns out the higher ups had an inkling or two about what was going to happen and made a quick buck on it.
Besides totalitarian rule, what is his solution for avoiding a repeat of the last 47years?
Edited on Nov 14, 2011 at 7:04pmOct '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
The fix begins with me.
The fix begins with you.
It does not begin by us doing things together, but by each of us doing what needs to be done.
What is your "world view".
Me and you individually each must decide our answer. Unless we share the same answer we can do nothing about the mess we are in. We inhabit different universes and will, of necessity, have different and incompatible solutions.
We too often shotgun issues without addressing a coherent starting point... a shared world view.
Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, Agnostic? We will each deal with these issues by standing on a different platform to see the world. In some cases we share some partial agreement, but still are not standing on the same platform.
Edited on Nov 14, 2011 at 7:12pmAug '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
I was born in 1956. I don't think a person can become a better spouse, parent or citizen without identifying, acknowledging and rejecting his (her) past bad behavior. I think we boomers need to take a long hard look at the choices we made that greatly contributed to the current mess.
Edited on Nov 14, 2011 at 7:32pmMay '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
If you're seriously interested in the question, I commend to you two books by Strauss and Howe: 'Generations', and 'The Fourth Turning.' Both are very interesting and worth the time. In a nutshell, the authors posit that there are, within each generation, strong characteristics that become their imprint on the world and weak characteristics that produce reactions in their offspring.
There is no doubt the Baby Boomers (I am one, vintage '47) have created their share of chaos in the world. But we have also done some very good things, too. As Terrell David notes, the Greatest Generation won the war, built corporations, and took the country to new economic heights....but they also produced the Boomers who reacted against their values and created chaos in the process. Every generation produces both good and bad. Whichever generation you happen to be part of: you'll do it, too. You'll just make different mistakes.
Oct '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Was told once the younger folks hated Boomers with a passion, was not clear on the argument until speaking with some. It is easy and poor thinking to hold all guilty just by virtue of age. There are many things those of Boomer age would like to have done to correct the current state of affairs, save it was out of our hands. This belongs to the Politcials that made the rules and change them at whim.
This falls into the same thinking of placing blame on White Guilt as a tool for those not willing to accept the tasks of the day.
Such arguements from the young are cheaply reasoned and unlikely open to conversation.
To apply remedies to a dysfuntional system requires participation, not blame.
Simple.
Oct '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
As for Moral Rot, that is a choice and an adopted lifestyle. It is chosen, and not thrust upon anyone.
Dec '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
raycon: ...
What is your "world view". ...
We too often shotgun issues without addressing a coherent starting point... a shared world view.
I agree completely that we don't talk "world view" often enough. This became clear to me during the Living Solidarity class with what I call "the socialists" at my church. Before we seek solutions, we need clarity on our respective world views and where we differ.
I just ran across this from the Catechism tonight and am glad to have a place to share it...
In general, I'd say the baby boomer culture tried to internalize the source of good (good intentions, good hearts, self-esteem) rather than attributing it to God, and tried to externalize the source of evil (evil corporations, societal pressures, conservatives), rather than admitting to our own concupiscence. Predictably, the result is an inverted moral compass.
May '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Gah! Let me say this: I am sick to death hearing about boomers! My whole damn life, it has been boomers. They have been talked about and put center stage since they were in their 20's. I am 41 now. At some point does Gen-X get appreciated or listened too?
I expect, by the time the Boomers are all gone, it will be Gen-Y all the time.
Sucks to be between too bigger groups.
Oct '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Bryan G. Stephens: Gah! Let me say this: I am sick to death hearing about boomers! My whole damn life, it has been boomers. They have been talked about and put center stage since they were in their 20's. I am 41 now. At some point does Gen-X get appreciated or listened too?
I expect, by the time the Boomers are all gone, it will be Gen-Y all the time.
Sucks to be between too bigger groups. · Nov 14 at 8:26pm
Get used to it Pilgrim, who knows what will be laid at your doorstep.
Jun '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Oh my god, the Boomer generation started in 1946 and George Bush was born in 1946. I knew it! I knew it!
Jun '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
I am from smack dab in the middle of Gen-X so I am an intrinsic philosophical enemy of the Boomers. They worshiped corporate loyalty we spit on the concept. They wanted to change the world, we just want to live in it. They wanted to fix every problem with more problems, we want to just find out what works. Boomers obeyed authority, we ignored it.
Generation-X slacked all of those years because we knew that we would need their energy later in life to clean-up the mess they were gonna' leave us with. So you better thank God your future is in the hands of a bunch of individualistic pragmatists who like to have fun.
Edited on Nov 14, 2011 at 9:09pmFeb '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
I'll chime in again with another plug for the website http://generationaldynamics.com which takes Strauss and Howe's ideas further. In particular, read the free book "Generational Dynamics for Historians." The site itself may look a bit rough around the edges, but the writer is a thinker and a programmer, not a web site designer. The analysis is pretty thought-provoking.
Dec '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
As much as such a sentiment can be true, yes. The Boomers did indeed wreck it all. You can try and blame their parents, but I'm not buying it.
Beasley: Hearing another screed tossing "free trade" into the mix of thing wrong with this country makes me want to pitch my beer bottle at this guy....
If his contention is that a wise group of overseers would have avoided it, I would point him to the recent publication of Peter Schweizer's new book, "throw them all out." Turns out the higher ups had an inkling or two about what was going to happen and made a quick buck on it.
Besides totalitarian rule, what is his solution for avoiding a repeat of the last 47years? · Nov 14 at 7:03pm
No mystical overseers needed, Beasley. Just the same trade policies that have worked so well for Germany and South Korea.
Aug '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Do you suppose that children who have been brought up badly never have moral rot thrust upon them, at least to some degree?
If moral rot is all you know, how would you know at first that there's even a choice? Yes, adult reality should teach you eventually, but what if it's too little too late?
Aug '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
But all this talk of baby boomers is depressing me...
How about a different sort of boomer?
This is what Okies call a mountain boomer. Nice, isn't it?
Edited on Nov 14, 2011 at 10:38pmApr '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
Still, Walter Russell Mead was able to squeeze something out of the essay. Mead writes:
Mead's a Boomer himself, so he's not saying that all Boomers are this way, just that the generation has produced some problems. What do you think? Is there something to this "blame Boomers" approach or is it just another way of avoiding handling the problems we face? ·
To quote myself from a couple days ago, there weren't a lot of Boomers voting 1933-1965. These problems came directly out of the The Greatest Generation, and had their roots in the Progressives before them.
That being said, I don't think we've done much to improve things. It is probably fitting that in five years, even the slowest of the Boomers will realize that "80 is the new 65."
Oct '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
A complete monster inbedded itself in happy valley . Infested all he touched. Maybe, just maybe it has nothing generational about it...just a monster feeding itself...