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Infantile America
Men's News Daily ^ | 8/16/07 | Thomas Brewton

Posted on 08/16/2007 4:00:16 PM PDT by qam1

Collapse of the subprime mortgage market reflects the "don't trust anybody over 30" mentality of the Baby Boomers.

From 1605 until the late 1960s, Americans universally subscribed to Benjamin Franklin's maxim,"A penny saved is a penny earned." Since the Baby Boomer student anarchism of the late 1960s and 1970s, we have become a nation, on balance, worshiping infantile, instant, hedonistic gratification.

Liberals’ ideas about “values” have to do with the absence of personal restraints and with material goods and services, which is what the welfare state is all about. Values for the colonists were the elements of spiritual morality, the intangible qualities that differentiated humans from other animals.

The values of 1776 preached individual self-restraint, self-reliance, and hard work for the future of one’s family. Liberal values give us what has been called a juvenocracy, a society dominated by the heedless pursuit of instant gratification that is characteristic of inexperienced youth: devil take the hindmost; eat, drink, and be merry.

The current generation are less to blame than their Baby Boomer teachers who fancied themselves so smart that they didn't need education. Their mission was to take control of universities, eradicate the classical curriculum that transmitted the values of Western civilization, and to replace it with "relevant" subjects, i.e., the ideology of socialism's revolutionary social justice.

That brand of social justice preaches that everyone is entitled, indeed has a Constitutional right, to an equal share of society's goods and services, without having first to work and save to acquire the objects of their desires.

Yes, unsophisticated home buyers failed to understand what would happen to mortgage payments when interest rates rose. But more fundamentally, they failed to grasp that jobs can be lost, and anticipated salary increases might not come to pass; that elementary prudence demands having the wherewithal to pay before your buy, as well as having a cash reserve to carry you over emergency periods. Schooled by Baby Boomer "respected educators," they believed that it is their right to indulge to any extent and rely upon the Federal government to bail them out.

What I wrote in A Divided Nation Without God applies to our economic juvenocracy. In Beyond Good and Evil (1885), speaking of the ethos prevailing in Western Europe (what we witness today in the United States as a cultural war between Judeo-Christian traditionalists and liberal-progressive, atheistic materialists), Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

Anarchists in 1885 were savagely antagonistic to this [original laissez-faire] liberal faith in “progress”

...and even more to the bungling philosophasters and brotherhood-visionaries who call themselves Socialists and desire a “free society” – but in actuality the anarchists are of the same breed, of the same thorough and instinctive hostility against any social structure other than that of the “autonomous” herd (they go so far as to reject the concepts of “master” and “servant” – [Neither God nor Master] is one of the Socialist slogans)...

...they are one in their faith in the morality of commonly felt compassion as though this feeling constituted morality itself, as though it were the summit, the attained summit of mankind, the only hope for the future, the consolation of the living, the great deliverance from all the guilt of yore – they are all one in their faith in fellowship as that which will deliver them, their faith in the herd, in other words, in “themselves”...

Nietzsche could easily have been describing today’s “educated” young people coming out of our colleges and universities, having been thoroughly inculcated with the anti-American, atheistic, and philosophically materialistic religious views of the Vietnam War Baby-Boomers who infest academia’s professoriats.

As many other observers have noted, our short-changed young graduates have been led to believe that universal indulgence in narcotics, sexual promiscuity, and rebellion against the nation’s founding traditions constitutes individuality: Nietzsche’s herd-mentality. Conformity to the latest media-communicated fad in dress, entertainment, and social justice ideas is “individuality.” The media bombard us with images of youth, turning society into an immature juvenocracy that worships only that which is novel and consciously rejects the wisdom of experience in past ages.

Nietzsche’s “commonly felt compassion as though this feeling constituted morality itself” is the doctrine enunciated by our first socialist Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. – truth is whatever wins out in the public market, whatever viewpoint the media can create in the minds of the majority of citizens.

Conspicuously absent is any sense of personal responsibility.

Blaming mortgage brokers for the subprime collapse is like blaming alcoholism on the distillers.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: babyboomers; genx; growupalready; mortgage; selfishkiddies; z
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1 posted on 08/16/2007 4:00:20 PM PDT by qam1
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To: qam1; ItsOurTimeNow; PresbyRev; Fraulein; StoneColdGOP; Clemenza; m18436572; InShanghai; xrp; ...

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.  

2 posted on 08/16/2007 4:03:11 PM PDT by qam1 (There's been a huge party. All plates and the bottles are empty, all that's left is the bill to pay)
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Comment #3 Removed by Moderator

To: qam1
"don't trust anybody over 30" mentality of the Baby Boomers.

_____________________________________

Once more the children on FR show their ignorance in an attempt to punish the adults. The 'don't trust anyone over thirty' cliche came from a MOW called Wild in the Streets...it was written, produced and directed by members of the "greatest generation".

You are such a dope.

4 posted on 08/16/2007 4:07:14 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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To: qam1

The housing market here in Phoenix is starting to collapse. I’m looking forward to buying a home soon.


5 posted on 08/16/2007 4:07:49 PM PDT by Antonello (Oh my God, don't shoot the banana!)
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To: qam1
The current generation are less to blame than their Baby Boomer teachers who fancied themselves so smart that they didn't need education. Their mission was to take control of universities, eradicate the classical curriculum that transmitted the values of Western civilization, and to replace it with "relevant" subjects, i.e., the ideology of socialism's revolutionary social justice.

And they hang on, like a bad cold...


6 posted on 08/16/2007 4:09:25 PM PDT by Nervous Tick
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To: qam1

Oh please. Like no one saw this coming. My brother is a real estate broker here in Southern California, and we were joking this morning about how he was selling multi-million dollar houses to crackheads who talked about how thick they wanted the marble on the countertops. No-doc loans. Give me a break.


7 posted on 08/16/2007 4:10:37 PM PDT by 14themunny
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To: wtc911
The mortgage meltdown was caused by private ratings agencies, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch who pawned off sub prime refinance loans as just another loan and packaged these up like bonds. The “re” in refinance should have perked up some ears. They knew sub prime was thin ice to begin with.
8 posted on 08/16/2007 4:14:14 PM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (BTUs are my Beat.)
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To: qam1

I will concede that I have some things to learn from younger generations despite their infatuation with body piercing, tattoos, and a God awful excuse for music.


9 posted on 08/16/2007 4:15:49 PM PDT by Radix (Mr. Natural says..."Be like two fried eggs. Keep your sunny side up.")
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To: wtc911

What is “MOW”?


10 posted on 08/16/2007 4:35:29 PM PDT by Red_Devil 232 (VietVet - USMC All Ready On The Right? All Ready On The Left? All Ready On The Firing Line!)
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To: qam1

Personally, I don’t trust anyone UNDER thirty...

And for all the identifying of the source of the problem, we all know that absolutely nothing can be done about it.


11 posted on 08/16/2007 4:41:14 PM PDT by Old Sarge (This tagline in memory of FReeper 68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub)
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To: qam1

Collapse of the subprime mortgage market reflects...an opportunity to buy more property at a discount.

Now if only the liberal taxers would also collapse.


12 posted on 08/16/2007 4:41:48 PM PDT by sergeantdave
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To: qam1
Genrally one of those articles that make me say, "I wish I had written that", except the the weak ending:

Blaming mortgage brokers for the subprime collapse is like blaming alcoholism on the distillers.

The distillers and the mortgage brokers are experts at their product, and they know exactly what their products do, or can do if abused.

One does not distribute nips of whiskey at AA meetings, and is that at all different from issuing bent-rules loans to spendthifts?

13 posted on 08/16/2007 4:43:35 PM PDT by Gorzaloon (Food imported from China = Cesspool + Flavr-Straw™)
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To: qam1

Oh sure, the scumbags peddling ridiculous mortgages had nothing to do with it. And now they’re whining for the government to bail them out.


14 posted on 08/16/2007 4:43:45 PM PDT by Wolfie
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To: Red_Devil 232

TV Movie of the Week.


15 posted on 08/16/2007 4:52:36 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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Comment #16 Removed by Moderator

To: qam1
This boomer is writing this from a house that I own and is paid for completely out of my own lifelong hard work. I'm getting a little tired of peeling off the tar from the broad brush you're wielding the umpteenth time it slaps across my butt. When you've done this you'll have a right to start smirking at "Boomers." Until then I cordially invite you and the rest of the X'ers to stick a sock in it. IMHO.
17 posted on 08/16/2007 4:59:47 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill

Oh, you haven’t heard? According to some Freepers we Baby Boomers are the cause of all the troubles in the world, no matter what we did with our lives. And of course there are no genetic Socialist Nitwits among the Gen X/Gen Y souls, and if there are, it’s The Boomers’ Fault too!


18 posted on 08/16/2007 5:19:29 PM PDT by FlyVet
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To: wtc911

It was widely quoted by Jerry Rubin.

First uttered by Jack Weinberg before that movie you reference.


19 posted on 08/16/2007 5:34:02 PM PDT by Syncro
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To: Powerclam
FWIW, as with JFK and Challenger, I still remember where I was the first time I ever heard of Adjustable Rate mortgages. And I remember thinking that the idea had “DISASTER IN THE MAKING” written all over it.

Unlike the first two I can't remember the "where" of ARMs, but my reaction was the same as yours.

20 posted on 08/16/2007 5:37:23 PM PDT by sionnsar (trad-anglican.faithweb.com |Iran Azadi| 5yst3m 0wn3d - it's N0t Y0ur5 (SONY) | UN: Useless Nations)
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