Speaking up for the boomers...

This guy is right on the money. FWIW, I am SO sick and tired of being gratuitously demonized for no other reason than the year of my birth (1952). Here's the article in it's entirety;

This Boomer Isn't Going to Apologize

By STEPHEN MOORE (Wall Street Journal)

Last weekend I attended my niece's high-school graduation from an upscale prep school in Washington, D.C. These are supposed to be events filled with joy, optimism and anticipation of great achievements. But nearly all the kids who stepped to the podium dutifully moaned about how terrified they are of America's future -- yes, even though Barack Obama, whom they all worship and adore, has brought "change they can believe in." A federal judge gave the commencement address and proceeded to denounce the sorry state of the nation that will be handed off to them. The enemy, he said, is the collective narcissism of their parents' generation -- my generation. The judge said that we baby boomers have bequeathed to the "echo boomers," "millennials," or whatever they are to be called, a legacy of "greed, global warming, and growing income inequality."

And everyone of all age groups seemed to nod in agreement. One affluent 40-something woman with lots of jewelry told me she can barely look her teenagers in the eyes, so overcome is she with shame over the miseries we have bestowed upon our children.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that graduation ceremonies have become collective airings of guilt and grief. It's now chic for boomers to apologize for their generation's crimes. It's the only thing conservatives and liberals seem to agree on. Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, told Butler University grads that our generation is "just plain selfish." At Grinnell College in Iowa, author Thomas Friedman compared boomers to "hungry locusts . . . eating through just about everything." Film maker Ken Burns told this year's Boston College grads that those born between 1946 and 1960 have "squandered the legacy handed to them by the generation from World War II."

I could go on, but you get the point. We partied like it was 1999, paid for it with Ponzi schemes and left the mess for our kids and grandkids to clean up. We're sorry -- so sorry.

Well, I'm not. I have two teenagers and an 8-year-old, and I can say firsthand that if boomer parents have anything for which to be sorry it's for rearing a generation of pampered kids who've been chauffeured around to soccer leagues since they were 6. This is a generation that has come to regard rising affluence as a basic human right, because that is all it has ever known -- until now. Today's high-school and college students think of iPods, designer cellphones and $599 lap tops as entitlements. They think their future should be as mapped out as unambiguously as the GPS system in their cars.

CBS News reported recently that echo boomers spend $170 billion a year -- more than most nations' GDPs -- and nearly every penny of that comes from the wallets of the very parents they now resent. My parents' generation lived in fear of getting polio; many boomers lived in fear of getting sent to the Vietnam War; this generation's notion of hardship is TiVo breaking down.

How bad can the legacy of the baby boomers really be? Let's see: We're the generation that spawned Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, ATMs and Gatorade. We defeated the evils of communism and delivered the world from the brink of global thermonuclear war. Now youngsters are telling pollsters that they think socialism may be better than capitalism after all. Do they expect us to apologize for winning the Cold War next?

College students gripe about the price of tuition, and it does cost way too much. But who do these 22-year-old scholars think has been footing the bill for their courses in transgender studies and Che Guevara? The echo boomers complain, rightly, that we have left them holding the federal government's $8 trillion national IOU. But try to cut government aid to colleges or raise tuitions and they act as if they have been forced to actually work for a living.

Yes, the members of this generation will inherit a lot of debts, but a much bigger storehouse of wealth will be theirs in the coming years. When I graduated from college in 1982, the net worth of America -- all our nation's assets minus all our liabilities -- was $16 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Today, even after the meltdown in housing and stocks, the net worth of the country is $45 trillion -- a doubling after inflation. The boomers' children and their children will inherit more wealth and assets than any other in the history of the planet -- that is, unless Mr. Obama taxes it all away. So how about a little gratitude from these trust-fund babies for our multitrillion-dollar going-away gifts?

My generation is accused of being environmental criminals -- of having polluted the water and air and ruined the climate. But no generation in history has done more to clean the environment than mine. Since 1970 pollutants in the air and water have fallen sharply. Since 1960, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have cut in half the number of days with unsafe levels of smog. The number of Americans who get sick or die from contaminants in our drinking water has plunged for 50 years straight.

Whenever kids ask me why we didn't do more to combat global warming, I explain that when I was young the "scientific consensus" warned of global cooling. Today's teenagers drive around in cars more than any previous generation. My kids have never once handed back the car keys because of some moral problem with their carbon footprint -- and I think they are fairly typical.

The most absurd complaint of all is that the health-care system has been ruined by our generation. Oh, really? Thanks to massive medical progress in the past 30 years, the chances of dying from heart disease and many types of cancer have been cut in half. We found effective treatments for AIDS within a decade. Life expectancy has risen and infant mortality fallen. That doesn't sound so "selfish" to me.

Yes, we are in a deep economic crisis today -- but it's no worse than what we boomers faced in the late 1970s after years of hyperinflation, sky-high tax rates and runaway government spending. We cursed our parents, too. But then we grew up and produced a big leap forward in health, wealth and scientific progress. Let's see what this next generation of over-educated ingrates can do.

For those who would cite the 60's as proof of our inferior status, I'll just mention that the so-called Greatest Generation was running the country then. Take it up with those clowns.

While we're talking about both the boomers and the "Greatest Generation", I'll reprint a post on the topic I authored a few years back. Much of it is still germane. Here it is;


I guess I'll stop hearing about inter-generation comparisons after I'm dead. Recently I (once again) came across a spate of articles dealing with the selfishness & self-centeredness of the Baby Boomers as opposed to the noble characteristics of the Greatest Generation. Oh, bull crap!

Am I the only one who thinks it's all a bunch of crap? Maybe I'm not normal but I try to take folks as I find 'em. Nothing more or less. I've known some real jerks from that "Greatest" generation and some really selfless folks from the Baby Boomer ranks.

For what it's worth, the "Greatest" generation, those who came of age during the Depression and went on to fight in WWII did what they had to in order to survive. That's it. Period. During both the Depression and WWII they did what they were told and lived to tell the tale.

The Depression years saw them as too young to make any difference in the world. When WWII came along they filled the ranks of the military and successfully brought the Axis to it's knees. Yep. However during that war all leadership and policy making was done by a generation preceding theirs. The blunt truth is that they were the cannon fodder of WWII. No leadership required, just fill the open billets in the military. With a draft in place to make that happen I question if the call to arms was as willingly taken up as many would have us believe.

Following that the "Greatest" went on to run the country and lead the world. How did they do? The record is a mixed bag, IMHO.

It was the "Greatest" generation in the person of JFK who left our allies high and dry at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Who took us into a no-win war that hinged more on public relations than a true desire for victory (Viet Nam). Thanks LBJ. It was the "Greatest" generation who unleashed the police dogs and turned the fire hoses on peaceful, non-violent civil rights marchers. It was the "Greatest" generation who trashed the environment to the point of rivers literally catching fire (anyone else remember the Mahonganela River burning for years?). It was the leadership of the "Greatest" generation in the person of Jimmy Carter who caved in to the Ayotollah of Iran, paving the way for our present day clash with Islamofacists.

On the other hand, they also gave us men on the moon and the leadership of Ronald Reagan. They developed our economy to be the powerhouse of the world.

Like I said, a mixed bag.

As for the much reviled Baby Boomers, what does our record show?

Viet Nam war protests (done by the same age group that was fighting there, I really think one cancels out the other). Sex, drugs, rock & roll, (guilty as charged). Cindy Sheehan, Bill Clinton, John Kerry.

On the other hand we've given the world Bill Gates & the Internet, Collin Powell, GW Bush, John McCain and Rudy Guiliani.

Another mixed bag, IMHO.

This crap could go on for days. And generations that follow on could continue playing the game of "one-up". For what reason, really?

Why don't we all take a deep breath, stop the comparisons and start identifying with one another? Hey who knows, we might all learn something in the way of humility then.

And we all might just start growing up!