"What's the matter with kids today?" is the title of a song from the musical "Bye, Bye Birdie" pretty much sums up everything I'm about to say about the generation that gave us hippies, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, the "Easy Rider," Woodstock, and free lovin''. I'm referring of course to the "Baby Boomer" generation, those children born in the late 1940's following the end of World War II. This generation owes it's size and everything else to the fact that there were a lot of "hookups" happening when "Johnny came marching home" from the European and Pacific theaters. These actions had consequences, and in keeping with the morality of the day, these men and women got MARRIED and actually RAISED the children they had conceived during their drunken "hook-ups." Lucky for the BOOMER Generation, there WERE no Planned Parenthood abortion mills or free clinics around the corner to keep THEM from being born.
So how is it possible that the generation that survived the Great Depression and then fought and defeated the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan, came back home and led this country to one of the greatest periods of prosperity and growth the word has ever seen, produce a generation that in less than fifty years time would singlehandedly undo everything their parents and grandparents had done for them? Sadly, a significant portion of the blame rests wtih the Greatest Generation, themselves. They were so determined that their children should know none of the hardship and adversity that marred their younger lives that they were over-indulgent and over protective of their children to the extent that they literally spoiled them ROTTEN.
The GREATEST generation had grown up in a country that was in the grip of the Great Depression for mos of their lives. They had their CHARACTER forged in the blood and iron of World War II. They had know real hardships, deprivation, and seen all manner of human suffering and they were determined that their CHILDREN would not know such things if they could help it. This goal was made possible by the economc boom that followed the finish of both the WAR, and the economic policies of Frankin D. Roosevelt wnen a President with good old fashined COMMON SENSE took the office and proceeded to dismantle the maze of alphbet soup buracracies put in place during the New (or was it RAW) Deal. Truman understood that it was in fact these very policies that were responsbile for the United States being the ONLY country int he WORLD to have a GREAT Deperession, which had only ABATED during the war and reared its' ugly head once more when Johnny came marching HOME again and tried to a find a JOB that did NOT include catching bullets as part of its' enumeration of duties.
Thanks to the economic boom that Truman enabled, the children of the BOOMER generation were the first to grow up if not actually IN the LAP of luxury, they were in pretty closee proximity to it. It was THIS generation that was the first to expect new cloethes at the beginning of EVERY school year, catered birthday parties (complete with clown or magician), a backyard swimming pool, air conditioning, television, and the possibility of getting handed the keys to a new or late model used car upon reaching their seixteenth birthday and obtaining their driver's license. This was ALSO the first generation for whom the possibilty of a university education was more than a remote one. Sadly, many of the boomers did go to college wehre they ran smack into the waiting arms of communist ideologues tthat had been infiltrating the faculties of these colleges and universities since the early part of tghe twentieth century, when Americans learned the extent of the atrocities perpetrated by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution and Communism become the anathema to Americans that it did and SHOULD have REMAINED!
Imagine the pride shining in the eyes of parents of the GREATEST generation as they packed their wholesome, fresh faced, corn fed progreny off to college to become Doctors, or engineers, or even LAWYERS (which were still REPECTED in those days). These children would have opportunities the parents never even DREAMED of. Conversely, imaagine their HORROR when, a few short months LATER, they opened their door to find a greasy, long-haired, unhygenic, drug addled HIPPIE standing where there son had been, or if it's a daughter, add PREGNANT to the description, the father being one of her philosophy professors. Now imagine, that you've reovered from your initilal shock, only to find out over dinner that the child that had revered you as his HERO and wanted to be just like you, now referred to you as a "capitalist PIG" or "the MAN" or "the ESTABLISHMENT" or a "Bourgoisee criminal" and vowing to bring your entire way of life down around your ears. These were scenes that played out in American households all throughout the SIXTIES and SEVENTIES.
To be fair, not EVERY member of the boomer generation turned into a HIPPIE. Indeed, many of them, thanks to a strong Christian family upbringing, were able to resist the lure of marxism and the temptations of hedonism. It was for this reason that more extreme marxists like Bill Ayers opined that students needed to be radicalized at an earlier age, prompting many commynist thinkers and sympathizers to become teachers themselves and enter the elementary and secondary schools to being indoctrinating children that were less mature and less experienced. For these reasons, they were less likely to oppose the ideas being forced upon them by teachers more interested in creating future communistis than in actually TEACHING children to do anything productive, like READ. But that's a topic for a while different essay.
If there is a simple way to distill the real legacy of the boomers into something that will fit in a Twitter post, it would be that this generation destroyed the American concepts of personal responsibility, and the FAMILY. If you think about it logically, thanks to boomers actions no long have CONSEQUENCES, at leastt not PERSONAL ones, in theory at least.
Think about it this way. If you're sexually irresponsible, they created a pill to spare you those consequnces, and they'll give out condoms as well as teach you how to do things in school. if you STILL manage to and get KNOCKED up, they made it legal to murder the baby so it doesn't become a burden to you, and they'll even help you get around telling your PARENTS. If you opt to HAVE the child, you're eligible for all manner of free stuff from the federal and state government including unearned income tax cfedit, welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, medicaid, etc. You've hit the JACKPOT.
Likewise, If you rack up debt you can't pay, no problem. They pass a law and suddenly you're FREE and CLEAR. If you take crazy risks run a business into the ground, no problem. Either the GOVENRMENT can bail you out, or you can go bankrupt, and as long as you haven't committed a criminal act (like a Madoff style Ponzii scheme) , your house, car, Rolex, and bank accounts are safe. Too bad the same CAN'T be said for your shareholders. This explains to conduct of Wall Street, Counbtrywide Morrgage, and FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC in causing the recent housing and stock market MELTDOWN, but why it is that only Bernie Madoff lost everything and wen tto PRISON? Why is Angelo Mozilla still strutting aroudn free an dliving in his placial estate?
IN a different way of illustrating lack of personal responsibility, if a government wants to invade your privacy but that pesky FOURTH Amendment keeps getting in the way, no problem again. We'll just pass a PATRIOT Act, and suddenly, they can LEGALLY come into your home, business, bank account, mailbox or wahever whenever they please, and WITHOUT your knowledge, let alone CONSENT. The whole BOOMER generation thinks they can LEGISLATE anything, and that their drones in the LEGAL system and Judiciary will give them cover. Sadly, they seem to have been RIGHT in that assessment for the most part. Progressive or liberal activist judges have legalized CRIMINAL behavior msny times over.
Why do you think good little commies become either LAWYERS or Community Organizers? It's to FORCE legislation, or write law via the BENCH that they can't get through the ballot box such as ABORTION! No elected legislator ever passed a law legalizing abortion. That was done by the COURTS. Since the landmark and totally UNCONSITUTIONAL "Roe v. Wade" case, however, MANY legislators have voted to spend taxpayer dollars subsidizing the abortion INDUSTRY via Planned Parenthood, and now through Obama Care! Since the boomers entered colleges, more generation of Americans are becoming Teachers, lawyers, or community organizers than any other career fields. Wouldn't it nice if you could find a DOCTOR when you need one? Wouldn't it be even NICER to find MEN who know how to DO more than talk or type?
The BOOMERS have been on the political, social, and economic scene for nearly FIFTY years now, and in their wake is a country that went from a moral nation and an eoconomic and military superpower that produced the finest goods in the world and had a rock solid economy, to a national riddled with debt, social problems, economic misery, devalued currency and eroding freedoms. To see how much we've lost form what THEY inherited, you have only to watch old movies, find old newspapers on microfilm at your local library, watch reruns of "Happy Days" or even the more current show "Mad Men." I think one of the reasons for the popularity of THAT show, it that it reminds of the time in our history when it was really GOOD to be an AMERICAN! Clearly we've lost a LOT during the stewardship of the BOOMERS, and like the ripple effect created in a pond when you toss a rock in th ecenter, this generation has INFECTED every successive one in greater and greater numbers.
So, the next time you see an aged hippie boomer rolling down the road on his power scooter and you're sorely temptedto exact a little "poetic justice" by pushing it over on top of him, think again. The mantra of the boomers was "if if feels good, DO it" and though it may FEEL great to knock that old hippie over on his ass and crush him under his own scooter, don't DO it. In that way, you're REJECTING his entire philosophy of life, and only by doing THAT can we hope to being to clean up the MESS left to us by our WORST generation and restore this country to it's natural state of FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!
The GREATEST generation had grown up in a country that was in the grip of the Great Depression for mos of their lives. They had their CHARACTER forged in the blood and iron of World War II. They had know real hardships, deprivation, and seen all manner of human suffering and they were determined that their CHILDREN would not know such things if they could help it. This goal was made possible by the economc boom that followed the finish of both the WAR, and the economic policies of Frankin D. Roosevelt wnen a President with good old fashined COMMON SENSE took the office and proceeded to dismantle the maze of alphbet soup buracracies put in place during the New (or was it RAW) Deal. Truman understood that it was in fact these very policies that were responsbile for the United States being the ONLY country int he WORLD to have a GREAT Deperession, which had only ABATED during the war and reared its' ugly head once more when Johnny came marching HOME again and tried to a find a JOB that did NOT include catching bullets as part of its' enumeration of duties.
Thanks to the economic boom that Truman enabled, the children of the BOOMER generation were the first to grow up if not actually IN the LAP of luxury, they were in pretty closee proximity to it. It was THIS generation that was the first to expect new cloethes at the beginning of EVERY school year, catered birthday parties (complete with clown or magician), a backyard swimming pool, air conditioning, television, and the possibility of getting handed the keys to a new or late model used car upon reaching their seixteenth birthday and obtaining their driver's license. This was ALSO the first generation for whom the possibilty of a university education was more than a remote one. Sadly, many of the boomers did go to college wehre they ran smack into the waiting arms of communist ideologues tthat had been infiltrating the faculties of these colleges and universities since the early part of tghe twentieth century, when Americans learned the extent of the atrocities perpetrated by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution and Communism become the anathema to Americans that it did and SHOULD have REMAINED!
Imagine the pride shining in the eyes of parents of the GREATEST generation as they packed their wholesome, fresh faced, corn fed progreny off to college to become Doctors, or engineers, or even LAWYERS (which were still REPECTED in those days). These children would have opportunities the parents never even DREAMED of. Conversely, imaagine their HORROR when, a few short months LATER, they opened their door to find a greasy, long-haired, unhygenic, drug addled HIPPIE standing where there son had been, or if it's a daughter, add PREGNANT to the description, the father being one of her philosophy professors. Now imagine, that you've reovered from your initilal shock, only to find out over dinner that the child that had revered you as his HERO and wanted to be just like you, now referred to you as a "capitalist PIG" or "the MAN" or "the ESTABLISHMENT" or a "Bourgoisee criminal" and vowing to bring your entire way of life down around your ears. These were scenes that played out in American households all throughout the SIXTIES and SEVENTIES.
To be fair, not EVERY member of the boomer generation turned into a HIPPIE. Indeed, many of them, thanks to a strong Christian family upbringing, were able to resist the lure of marxism and the temptations of hedonism. It was for this reason that more extreme marxists like Bill Ayers opined that students needed to be radicalized at an earlier age, prompting many commynist thinkers and sympathizers to become teachers themselves and enter the elementary and secondary schools to being indoctrinating children that were less mature and less experienced. For these reasons, they were less likely to oppose the ideas being forced upon them by teachers more interested in creating future communistis than in actually TEACHING children to do anything productive, like READ. But that's a topic for a while different essay.
If there is a simple way to distill the real legacy of the boomers into something that will fit in a Twitter post, it would be that this generation destroyed the American concepts of personal responsibility, and the FAMILY. If you think about it logically, thanks to boomers actions no long have CONSEQUENCES, at leastt not PERSONAL ones, in theory at least.
Think about it this way. If you're sexually irresponsible, they created a pill to spare you those consequnces, and they'll give out condoms as well as teach you how to do things in school. if you STILL manage to and get KNOCKED up, they made it legal to murder the baby so it doesn't become a burden to you, and they'll even help you get around telling your PARENTS. If you opt to HAVE the child, you're eligible for all manner of free stuff from the federal and state government including unearned income tax cfedit, welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, medicaid, etc. You've hit the JACKPOT.
Likewise, If you rack up debt you can't pay, no problem. They pass a law and suddenly you're FREE and CLEAR. If you take crazy risks run a business into the ground, no problem. Either the GOVENRMENT can bail you out, or you can go bankrupt, and as long as you haven't committed a criminal act (like a Madoff style Ponzii scheme) , your house, car, Rolex, and bank accounts are safe. Too bad the same CAN'T be said for your shareholders. This explains to conduct of Wall Street, Counbtrywide Morrgage, and FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC in causing the recent housing and stock market MELTDOWN, but why it is that only Bernie Madoff lost everything and wen tto PRISON? Why is Angelo Mozilla still strutting aroudn free an dliving in his placial estate?
IN a different way of illustrating lack of personal responsibility, if a government wants to invade your privacy but that pesky FOURTH Amendment keeps getting in the way, no problem again. We'll just pass a PATRIOT Act, and suddenly, they can LEGALLY come into your home, business, bank account, mailbox or wahever whenever they please, and WITHOUT your knowledge, let alone CONSENT. The whole BOOMER generation thinks they can LEGISLATE anything, and that their drones in the LEGAL system and Judiciary will give them cover. Sadly, they seem to have been RIGHT in that assessment for the most part. Progressive or liberal activist judges have legalized CRIMINAL behavior msny times over.
Why do you think good little commies become either LAWYERS or Community Organizers? It's to FORCE legislation, or write law via the BENCH that they can't get through the ballot box such as ABORTION! No elected legislator ever passed a law legalizing abortion. That was done by the COURTS. Since the landmark and totally UNCONSITUTIONAL "Roe v. Wade" case, however, MANY legislators have voted to spend taxpayer dollars subsidizing the abortion INDUSTRY via Planned Parenthood, and now through Obama Care! Since the boomers entered colleges, more generation of Americans are becoming Teachers, lawyers, or community organizers than any other career fields. Wouldn't it nice if you could find a DOCTOR when you need one? Wouldn't it be even NICER to find MEN who know how to DO more than talk or type?
The BOOMERS have been on the political, social, and economic scene for nearly FIFTY years now, and in their wake is a country that went from a moral nation and an eoconomic and military superpower that produced the finest goods in the world and had a rock solid economy, to a national riddled with debt, social problems, economic misery, devalued currency and eroding freedoms. To see how much we've lost form what THEY inherited, you have only to watch old movies, find old newspapers on microfilm at your local library, watch reruns of "Happy Days" or even the more current show "Mad Men." I think one of the reasons for the popularity of THAT show, it that it reminds of the time in our history when it was really GOOD to be an AMERICAN! Clearly we've lost a LOT during the stewardship of the BOOMERS, and like the ripple effect created in a pond when you toss a rock in th ecenter, this generation has INFECTED every successive one in greater and greater numbers.
So, the next time you see an aged hippie boomer rolling down the road on his power scooter and you're sorely temptedto exact a little "poetic justice" by pushing it over on top of him, think again. The mantra of the boomers was "if if feels good, DO it" and though it may FEEL great to knock that old hippie over on his ass and crush him under his own scooter, don't DO it. In that way, you're REJECTING his entire philosophy of life, and only by doing THAT can we hope to being to clean up the MESS left to us by our WORST generation and restore this country to it's natural state of FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!
