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?
- Comment (27)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments:
Sep '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
Hey, did I miss this conversation?
Jun '10
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
I'm kind of sick of the blame the boomers movement. Boomers have made mistakes but lets not forget the good the boomers have done. We are reaching older ages because of advances boomers have made in medicine and technology. The rape of the pension system began in a congress that was occupied by the pre-boomer generation and became the model for congress creatures thereafter. Boomers made advances in the technologies that changed our world utterly: cell phones, computers, the internet.
When I was younger there was a congress creature who advocated death for everyone over the age of 60. I haven't heard much from him lately but he didn't volunteer for euthanasia when he reached that magic age. In fact, I think he ran for reelection. I don't think the current generation is any more willing to take the burden from future generations by reducing their own carbon footprint to zero than this guy was.
Boomers are to blame for much...and to be praised for much. They built on the foundation of those who came before them, just as those who came after them will. What have the post-boomer generation done for us?
Apr '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
KarlUB:
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.
No mystical overseers needed, Beasley. Just the same trade policies that have worked so well for Germany and South Korea. ·
You keep claiming that Germany is protectionist, but it's still not true. Heritage's Economic Freedom rankings say that on trade Germany is behind Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Canda, and Chile, but no other significant economies. If the US took up German policies, it would increase trade freedom.
Germany is also a leader in results, importing and exporting more than others. In theory and in practice, they are far better free traders than their competitors, and have hence flourished, despite other, deplorable, policy preferences.
Apr '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
I believe in the book of Ezekiel, the exiles of Judah complain that their hardships are punishments for the sins of their fathers. God's reply: You got enough sins of your own, there's no need to account for your fathers.
It's human nature to look at a bad situation and try to find someone to blame: especially if that someone isn't oneself. We're better off looking at what we can do now to restore our nation.
Jul '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
The liberal drift in intellectual culture was not invented by boomers, but, i don't think anyone can deny that it was canonized and institutionalized by them in 68. Conservatives intellectuals have been fighting a rear-guard action ever since. The solidified nature of failed yippie culture has seeped into every generation since 68. Boomers are not the root cause of societal decay, that ignominy is reserved for the dominant form of post new deal liberalism, however, boomers permanently wove their misguided idealism into intellectual life, which could prove to be just as damaging.
Apr '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
This is just more of the left blaming all of us for its flaws.
Oct '11
Re: Baby Boomers and Moral Rot
It's the boomer media that is so annoying. There is a distinction to be made between upper middle class liberal boomers and the rest of them. They won't shut up about themselves and 1968 and Woodstock and Vietnam, and the draft etc. They couldn't just recognize the greatest generation they had to make it about them too and about boomer guilt and being mean to their parents and about how they finally have some understanding of their parents now that the liberal boomers are older and have a better connection with reality.
One of the best things about Mad Men at least the early seasons is that it looks at life in America before the boomers and actually contains an interesting portrayal of the Korean War period. WWII and Vietnam get immense and continuing coverage but the Korean War doesn't get the attention it deserves. I wish more popular media would focus on that era and I hope Mad Men doesn't get dragged into too much coverage of the late 60's.