CA: The Greatest Generation?

CaliforniaRepublic.org ^ | 10/24/06 | Ray Haynes

[NormsRevenge]

A lot of comments have been directed at this country’s “greatest generation,” those who suffered the Great Depression, fought World War II, and then rebuilt this country from the ruins of those catastrophic events.

I remember, as my generation attended college and entered the workforce, a lot of debate among my peers as to what we would do when we take over. We all thought we would “do it right,” make this country a better place to work, live and raise a family. I think I can say, having inherited a sizable legacy from the “Greatest Generation,” the baby boomers have pretty much screwed things up.

My peers really thought they were smarter than anybody else. Just ask them. They will tell you how much smarter they are than you. You are greedy. If you keep your money, you will just spend it on selfish things, like food, clothing and shelter for you and your family. You have to give your money to them, so they can spend it on food, clothing and shelter for your family. Medical care? Education? If you choose your doctor or your children’s school and pay for it, you will refuse to make sure your kids are healthy or can read and write. If they choose your kid’s doctor or school and pay for it, your children will get quality health care or education.

Of course, you have to hire them to do the work, and because they are so much smarter than you about what is good for you, they are going to require you, by use of government rules and regulations, to pay them a lot of money. They then use that power and money to enhance their power and money, not because they are greedy. Of course not, you are the greedy one, not them, because you don’t want to give them more of your money.

As a result of the arrogance of my generation, our health care system is falling apart, and our education system has collapsed. Government is bloated, incompetent, and inert. My generation is so smart, however, that these problems cannot possibly be our fault, so we keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to make things better.

Most of the initiatives on this November’s ballot prove this point. With the notable exceptions of Propositions 83, 85, and 90, the rest of the initiatives grow government, increase taxes, and/or expand government spending beyond all comprehension.

When I joined the state legislature in 1992, total state general fund spending was $42 billion. Our bonded indebtedness was about $15 billion. The Legislature talked about floating a $3 billion school bond. Today, total general fund spending is $102 billion; our bonded indebtedness exceeds $50 billion, and we have floated $35 billion in school bonds in the last six years. My colleagues in the state legislature still think we are not spending enough money, that we don’t have enough money to build schools, and that the people of the state of California are still too cheap because they don’t want to pay more in taxes.

When the “greatest generation” took over state government, they built an entire freeway system, a water system, a higher education system, and our entire K-12 structure on a state budget of less than $15 billion general fund per year. We can’t build a dam, a freeway, a levee, a school or a university on $102 billion. We can hire 50,000 new bureaucrats who will sit around and collect $100,000 a year to think about how they can build a freeway, school, dam, or university better, but they will never actually build anything.

I wonder what our kids will say about us when we hand this mess over to them.

[GoLightly]

What's left after that is the table scraps of their feast and the bickering between the successive generations......

Bingo! They gave a lot & in return, they demanded & got a lot.

[WorkingClassFilth]

The sum of your arguments are little more than cliches. Every generation thinks the next is falling over the edge and, if true, then the ultimate and causal fault lies in the Garden of Eden. Uh, I don't think that is too useful for the purposes of understanding social change and our nation's mortal danger.

What is true, and what remains unique, is the clear differences between boomer and their parents. When boomers wanted their hedonistic way and rejected social control through rebellion, they called it "the generation gap." The blatantly obvious difference between the two generations is so obtuse that even leftist academics study the division. Unfortunately, the left calls our detour into oblivion as good and 'liberating.'

Today, when apologists (some like yourself) want to minimize the impact of social decay and the distinct culpability of the boomer cohort, they retreat to weak defenses like your mutual guilt argument. Again, this issue is not about stalwart individuals within a generation - it is about the unique character and achievements that define a generation. In that regard, our g-g-generation stands out from all of its progenitors as having broken the links of faith and tradition, trashed Western idealism and done more to destroy America than any previous generation.

[luckystarmom]

The problem is that the liberals in your generation got control when they elected Clinton. Clinton is like the poster child for the boomers.

My brother is 10 years older than me, and I know a lot of people that are in the 50-60 age bracket that are wonderful.

However, there are a lot that are not, and they got Clinton elected.

[GoLightly]

The blatantly obvious difference between the two generations is so obtuse that even leftist academics study the division. Unfortunately, the left calls our detour into oblivion as good and 'liberating.'

Check the birthdates of all those "boomers" who led the charge sometime.

[WorkingClassFilth]

I used to work at a University. I can assure you that boomers are on the top of the list. Oh, sure we can play the game that academics have always had reds in their numbers, but we all know who the PC elite are, don't we. Revisionism? Well, we know that one, too. As I've said time and again, it isn't that bad people don't exist in the past; heck, it isn't even that bad people set the stage for others to act upon. What does matter - and the crux of this discussion - is who has broken with the faith and sacrifice of our Fathers and thrown away our national birthright?

A: Boomers.

[Gaffer]

You're right, it was the liberals. However, many of the 'other' boomers, and members of the "Greatest Generation" have seen fit to be content in being cared for in their waning years, somuchso that it 'colors' their vote on social spending issues and taxes (SS, medicare, taxes, property taxes, school taxes, etc.) It is just plain selfish to saddle the newest generation like that of my grand daughters with the burden of keeping the oldsters in the cost-free (you hear those words, "at no cost to me" an awful lot these days on TV) lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

[Mugwump]

"Before the first baby boomer was born, this nation had already begun the slide."

I agree. Even Mark Twain dabbled with ideas of socialism. His "mentor," William Dean Howells was disappointed that Mark Twain backed away from socialistic leanings when a capitalist "robber baron" helped him avoid bankruptcy.

Of course, I'm talking about the turn of the 20th Century, and the socialist model has been marching through the institutions ever since. And that's what we're talking about here -- socialism.

IMO, socialism is nothing more than elective/political monarchy. Those in government are our "betters," and the rest of us are expendable peasants who exist an serve at the pleasure of the elites.

I could go on, but I gotta watch my blood pressure. Suffice it to say that men like Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Eugene Debs, LBJ et al., have done far more to hasten the destruction of this country than the boomers.

[patton]

1962 here, also. Tired of getting painted with this broad brush.

I will pay for my grandparents SS, my parents SS, my kids education, and SS will be broke when I need it.

[wtc911]

It's true the "Greatest Generation" suffered immensely and accomplished Herculean tasks;

----------------------------------------------

They also gave us the Welfare State, Viet Nam, abortion-on-demand...and Jimmy Carter in the WH.

[GoLightly]

I can assure you that boomers are on the top of the list.

Check any single industry right now & you're gonna find boomers on the top of the heap. During the sixties you would have found people from "the Greatest Generation" in those positions.

Oh, sure we can play the game that academics have always had reds in their numbers, but we all know who the PC elite are, don't we. Revisionism?

I'm not trying to revise anything.

Well, we know that one, too. As I've said time and again, it isn't that bad people don't exist in the past; heck, it isn't even that bad people set the stage for others to act upon. What does matter - and the crux of this discussion - is who has broken with the faith and sacrifice of our Fathers and thrown away our national birthright?

There are a percentage of them in every single generation!

[Gaffer]

You must not have read the last part of that sentence.....

[GoLightly]

Much of it began with the forty-eighters, a group of German immigrants.

Have to laugh at the discussion page at Wiki, cuz it looks as though someone had written that they were communists (many of them were Socialists).

Kindergarten, the "PHD" & state level intrusions into public education based on "the Prussian model" were among the things which were embraced by the US, brought here by this relatively small band of German revolutionary intellectuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Forty-Eighters

Speaking of Socialists, Victor L. Berger was elected to Congress in 1910.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Berger

Frank P. Zeidler recently died. He was the Mayor in Milwaukee until 1960.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_P._Zeidler

[Mugwump]

Very enlightening. I'd forgotten the Prussian model, BTW. Is that the same as the Frankfurt School? I recall that John Dewey got his ideas from one or the other -- or both.

[GoLightly]

Dewey was following a proud "tradition", but the underpinnings were already well under way.

http://www.free-market.net/resources/libertydocs/bootie-zimmers-choice.html

[CompSciGuy]

"Sounds exactly like me except I only spent 4 years in the Navy. Every time I see one of these posts I scratch my head and think "I did all that?". Sounds like a bad case of transference to me. I don't see a grand movement of X, Y, Zer's trying to turn thing around though."

I think that in my generation's case (tail end of Gen X), we are still trying to figure out the way. We didn't have the guidance on the way we should live given to us by our parents (who rebelled against the same advice from their's). A lot of my peers are struggling through school debts, life debts, etc to make ends meet, some of us are interested in recapturing the youth that was never an option for us, while others can't seem to figure out why the powers that be still do things that are twenty years old. From my experiences with Boomer bosses, they expect me to wait, "get my time in grade" before giving me an opportunity to "do" something, or "turn things around". This is an attitude that they inherited from the "greatest generation" but something they never taught us as their children (by their actions.) A lot of my peers are getting caught in middle management, able to do enough to make things worse, but little to make things better. Perhaps we're late bloomers? Or maybe we're just fed up. It is hard to be optimistic or idealistic in a world that has had a lot of the air sucked out of it by a generation that sated its own vanity. (I know this is a broad brush, and not everyone who is a boomer did this, I am after all attempting to put a montage of emotional reactions by lots of Gen X'ers I've met into a few words.) I think the lucky X'ers (of whom I consider myself), had parents who were centered on their family, their children, they paid the bills, stayed together, and taught those values. Unfortunately for everyone that was lucky there seems to be the unlucky ones who lived in divorce, impoverished emotional families, or brutish war zones of competing egos. We're all a bit disaffected, some of it belongs on our shoulders, and some of it is the fault of the boomers. In a world where we were always told (by parents, the media, etc.) to express ourselves, it is hard to gain a group movement. X'er's are loners, or at most tribal, the desire to fit in only goes so far with us. The hope for boomers should be that whatever they have reaped they can sow. If you "did right" then you have no reason to worry. But from what I've heard from my friends, the 'Solyent Green' Nursing home awaits a lot of Boomer Parents. Maybe that will be the grand movement that joins the future generations.

[WorkingClassFilth]

You still miss the point...

We agree the bad people are in each generation. We agree that bad people were present and active in the '60s. We agree that many things went on before the arrival of the boomers to set the stage.

Fine.

What you do not see (or won't) is that the generation succession of handing liberty on to heirs was trashed by boomers bent on self-fufillment regardless of cost. As yet, you have ignored the overwhelming deviance (of every stripe) of our g-g-generation. As a conservative (I assume this) the notion of personal responsibility should be paramount in your concept of social order and stability. Of course, that is precisely the missing element in your analysis of the times and, oddly enough, the boomer apologists as well. Seems mighty strange to me that a g-g-generation that refered to itself as the 'me generation' (among other aliases) should be so loath to take any responsibility for the horrendous consequences that their drug use, promiscuity, socialist idealism, rank hypocrisy and total lack of self-control has wrought.

Hey, if it feels good, do it. Love means never having to say you're sorry.

[GoLightly]

As a conservative (I assume this) the notion of personal responsibility should be paramount in your concept of social order and stability.

It is. Responsibility is an individual thing.

Of course, that is precisely the missing element in your analysis of the times and, oddly enough, the boomer apologists as well.

I'm not trying to make excuses for anyone. Lumping people into any kind of group think based on age or "generation" is pointless.

Seems mighty strange to me that a g-g-generation that refered to itself as the 'me generation' (among other aliases) should be so loath to take any responsibility for the horrendous consequences that their drug use, promiscuity, socialist idealism, rank hypocrisy and total lack of self-control has wrought.

Every single generation has some of these people! Our nation was trending in that direction before the first boomer was born.

I was twenty when I bought my first house & that meant taking out our first mortgage. Our parents didn't give us a cent for down payment. Instead, I got the song & dance about how spoiled it made me. Twelve percent interest, but pulled it off & had to pay more than triple the price my parents had paid for their first house. We had used furniture, used clothes, used cars & no money for entertainment, but we were "spoiled". No money for entertainment was okay though, cuz we were working all of the time anyway.

I watched most of my peers knock themselves out to do the best they knew how for their families. You are trying to buy into a lot of media hype created about a generation & in doing so, you're not seeing them as individuals. Yes, many of my peers made bad life choices, but many more of them made correct choices.

Hey, if it feels good, do it. Love means never having to say you're sorry.

Check the bios of the originators of those phrases & get back to me!

[the OlLine Rebel]

"having inherited a sizable legacy from the “Greatest Generation,” the baby boomers have pretty much screwed things up."


Cheer up. Part of the legacy you received from the so-called "GG" is Dr. Spock mentality. It's why you were screwy, because your GG parents thought making nice-nice on you would be good, counter to all discipline naturally applied to all generations before.

The fact they raised Boomers with kid gloves makes them NOT the "greatest".

[WorkingClassFilth]

Responsibility is an individual thing.

I'm pleased that you agree with me that individual responsibility is fundamentally important. When the aggregate actions of these same individuals are examined, though, it becomes another piece of evidence that boomers are a failed generation. You and I, fortunately, are not in sync with the deeds and reputation of our times.

Lumping people into any kind of group think based on age or "generation" is pointless.

The need to make comparisons and draw contrasts is crucial to any kind of analysis. You cannot ameliorate the culpability of our g-g-generation or pass the buck onto the WWII'ers without doing precisely what you are objecting to. Sorry, friend, but a cohort, in a historical sense, is judged by the deeds (or misdeeds) of the many. Another way of saying it is that you are judged by the company you keep. By any honest and comprehensive standard, your objections do not hold water.

Every single generation has some of these people! Our nation was trending in that direction before the first boomer was born.

Uh, I guess you are have missed a page or two of history somewhere along the line. However, to be fair, please make your case that in 1945 a seething, pulsing generational desire to murder 45 million offspring was secretly practiced to enable carefree hedonism...

Truth is, there was no such characteristic to that generation. None. They valued and multiplied their children as the boomer cohort empirically attests. Now, we both agree there were deviants in those days as befitting human nature - even deviants that helped pass bad laws. That doesn't, however, define anything but the rule of human nature. The character of that generation is an astounding contrast to the self-justifying sniveling of our murderous and hedonistic g-g-generation.

You are trying to buy into a lot of media hype created about a generation & in doing so, you're not seeing them as individuals.

Once again, we are agreed that as individuals, many of us did not get on board with our g-g-generation. That said, we were/are the pig in a python in terms of our generational impact - on everything. That effect is the summation of all or our collective choices - and we collectively made horrible and suicidal choices. In that regard, we may be innocent members of a particularly weak, self-deluded and indulgent generation, but we are members nonetheless. If your individual conscience is troubled by a collective label, it's time to buck up and make a healthy distinction between your own self-identity and innocent membership in a loser g-g-generation that has brought America to the doorstep of our national demise.

[GoLightly]

When the aggregate actions of these same individuals are examined, though, it becomes another piece of evidence that boomers are a failed generation.

I disagree.

The need to make comparisons and draw contrasts is crucial to any kind of analysis.

Comparing on the basis of age is less relevant than comparing on the basis of ideology.

You cannot ameliorate the culpability of our g-g-generation or pass the buck onto the WWII'ers without doing precisely what you are objecting to.

I'm not trying to pass the buck to the WWII'ers or any "generation" that came before them.

Sorry, friend, but a cohort, in a historical sense, is judged by the deeds (or misdeeds) of the many. Another way of saying it is that you are judged by the company you keep. By any honest and comprehensive standard, your objections do not hold water.

My position remains.

Uh, I guess you are have missed a page or two of history somewhere along the line. However, to be fair, please make your case that in 1945 a seething, pulsing generational desire to murder 45 million offspring was secretly practiced to enable carefree hedonism...

Introduction of "the pill" into society enabled much of the carefree hedonism. As to your statement about "a desire to murder 45 million offspring", I could just as easily claim there was "a desire to murder 45 million *grandchildren*, as abortion was made legal via judicial fiat & correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there was even one justice of the boomer generation on that court.

Truth is, there was no such characteristic to that generation. None. They valued and multiplied their children as the boomer cohort empirically attests.

They multiplied their children, but I'd have to say that some didn't do so joyfully or because they valued children.

Now, we both agree there were deviants in those days as befitting human nature - even deviants that helped pass bad laws. That doesn't, however, define anything but the rule of human nature.

Ding ding ding, we're talking about the rule of human nature.

The character of that generation is an astounding contrast to the self-justifying sniveling of our murderous and hedonistic g-g-generation.

Again, I disagree.