My Destructive Generation

My generation could well be the first generation in American history to leave our country worse off than we found it.

I am a member of the baby boomer generation. The generation that came of age in the late sixties during the turbulent times of Woodstock, Watergate and Vietnam. The generation that is now holding the reins of power in most American institutions, from politics to media, to education and culture. The generation that will likely be responsible for squandering America's hard won freedoms and changing America into a third world country, all in the name of 'equality' and 'social justice.'

A defining hallmark of baby boomers on the left is hubris and an absolute refusal to learn or acknowledge the lessons of history. They know best.

Moral relativism is the cornerstone of most baby boomers. Their theories rest on subjective, personal values instead of concrete scientific definitions. And they acknowledge no other authority or moral code larger than one's choice. They have adopted the Rousseauian strategy of emphasis on passion instead of reason. And despite the utter failure of the social policies they have instituted, they persist in believing that they can define their own reality.

Author Shelby Steele, in his book White Guilt, comes closest to explaining how and why the baby boomer generation believes as it does. Steele makes the excellent point that every generation, when it comes of age, seeks to challenge authority and tradition. Like most adolescent rebels, they are quickly humbled because they overestimate their own truth and underestimate the truth of their elders. They learn a valuable life lesson when they are smacked down by their elders and reality.

My generation never learned this lesson. As Steele writes, "The sixties generation of youth is very likely the first generation in American history to have won its adolescent rebellion against its elders."

The reason for this: As baby boomers came of age, America had just taken the giant step of acknowledging and apologizing for its history of slavery and racism. At that moment in time, America had lost its moral authority, hence the progressive assaults on campuses resulted in defeating the traditional hierarchy. Heady stuff.

With this victory, my fellow boomers adopted the notion that they were invincible. "Their rite of passage to maturity was cut short and they were falsely inflated instead of humbled. Uninitiated, they devalue history rather than find direction in it, and feel entitled to break sharply and recklessly with the past."

The boomers’ adolescent rebellion was validated. They then proceeded to infect every segment of American society with their own, unproven theories.

The media that had historically acted as a watchdog became an enabler for the boomers. The media encouraged and validated the politically correct, utopian theories that were a result of hubris rather than sound policy. And they convinced millions of unsuspecting Americans along the way.

Our universities not only succumbed, they incorporated and taught as fact the baby boomers' notion of America as an oppressor and capitalism as evil. Courses in Western Civilization were replaced with women's studies, black studies and queer theory. Indoctrination replaced debate and group identity quietly started trumping individual accomplishment as the road to success.

Fast forward to today. President Obama and our Democrat Congress are the end result of a generation steeped in successful rebellion. They are the quintessential perpetual adolescents that define the baby boomer generation. Never having had to pay the price for our freedoms, they are oblivious to its worth. To Obama and most of his fellow boomers on the left, the Constitution is a roadblock to their more perfect vision. Instead, they take their cue from Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals.

My generation is now in a position to radically alter America. There is a very good chance that boomers will prevail in their efforts to defeat capitalism, God and traditional values and instill their own version of 'social justice.' Despite socialism having failed abjectly in every country it has been tried, baby boomers like Obama have the arrogance to believe that with them in charge, it will finally work.

Under the leadership of my fellow baby boomers, there is a very good chance that the America that we all know and love could end up on the ash heap of history. James Madison gave clear warning in 1788. "There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations..."

America is in the process of being conquered from within by an arrogant and elitist generation more concerned with their own status and power than with the good of the country. This is my generation. And I'm ashamed to be one of them.