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BURSTING THE BOOMER BUBBLE

By Charlie Sykes

I'm a few days late on this, but Bill Kristol deflates Baby Boomer self-congratulation:

 

 

Q: If the World War II generation was the "greatest generation," what is the Vietnam War generation?
A: I don't think the full judgment of history is in yet. There is certainly greatness in the '60s generation. They changed our attitudes about race in America, which was long overdue.
--Tom Brokaw, interviewed in the November 19 U. S. News & World Report, on his new book, Boom! Voices of the Sixties.

Whoa! The '60s generation changed our attitudes about race in America? Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King Jr.--were they from the Vietnam war generation? Earl Warren, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey? For that matter, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, murdered on June 21, 1964, in Mississippi? None of these was a member of the " '60s generation." None was a boomer.

There really was greatness in the "greatest generation." It fought and won World War II, then came home to achieve widespread prosperity and overcome segregation while seeing the Cold War through to a successful conclusion. But the greatest generation had one flaw, its greatest flaw, you might say: It begat the baby boomers.

The most prominent of the boomers spent their youth scorning those of their compatriots who fought communism, while moralizing and posturing at no cost to themselves. They went on to enjoy the benefits of their parents' labors, sacrificed little, and produced nothing particularly notable. But the boomers were unparalleled when it came to self-glorification, a talent they began developing as teenagers and have continued to improve up to this day. They were also good at bamboozling their parents, and members of the "silent generation" like Tom Brokaw, to be overly deferential to them--even to the point of giving them credit for things they didn't do.

 

 

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