Are Baby Boomers Our Misfortune?

self | 8/26/2004 | Wallace T. Cosgraves

[Wallace T.]

There is a great deal of pop cultural analysis that blames the Baby Boomer generation for the ills that plague American society. I believe that this analysis is as faulty as the perception that Jews were the cause of Communism. Rather, the culture wars that started in the 1960s are the outward manifestation of intellectual movements that began over 200 years before the Berkeley "Free Speech" movement or Woodstock.

With regard to the sexual revolution, it was the 1960s and 1970s when promiscuity, no fault divorce, abortion on demand, etc., became widespread in American society. However, that revolution did not occur in a vacuum. Since the Enlightenment of the 18th Century, a substantial portion of Western intellectuals rejected the concept of divinely ordained and immutable standards of right and wrong. In the 19th Century, the rise of the higher criticism movement caused many theologians to doubt the inspiration of Scripture. Higher criticism helped to spawn liberal Protestantism, which by 1960 had dominated most of the largest mainstream denominations in America. If "thou shalt not commit adultery" was the invention of man and not the command of a transcendent God, then a new basis had to be found for a social order. Humanists found this basis in what Rousseau called the General Will, that is to say, the the separate wills, rights and desires of each member of a society brought together as a single unit, which is to be governed by representatives of the people to achieve the common good.

However, the question arose as to whether Judeo-Christian sexual morality was truly for the common good. The rise of Sigmund Freud, with his emphasis on sexuality and repression, as the dominant figure in the then-new field of psychiatry, was an important factor in toppling taboos regarding sexuality. Feminists such as Margaret Sanger promoted birth control and abortion, as well as liberalized divorce laws, to "free" women from the "bondage" of housework and child care. The former entymologist turned sex researcher Alfred Kinsey promoted both the belief that non-monogamous sex, especially homosexuality, was far more widespread than it actually was. His sexuality studies, released in 1948 and 1954, were widely read and powerful arguments in favor of looser moral standards.

All of these advocates of the loosening of the Biblically based codes of morality needed both popular outlets to disseminate their position. Popular novels became increasingly lurid. Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown arose for their respective sexes as advocates of sexual freedom, through their respective magazines, Playboy and Cosmopolitan. By 1966, both Catholic and Protestant watchdogs of Hollywood movie production were disbanded. Emboldened by their disappearance and loosening moral standards, the film media promoted sexual amorality and freedom without consequences. Popular music was not exempt. Even in the Big Band era of the 1940s, sexual innuendo was rife, as it was in the jazz from which Big Band music derived. The rise of rock music, derived in part from the blues, performed by black underworld figures who mimicked Gospel music and in part from Anglo-American "honky tonk," glorified blatant sexuality.

Political support was needed for overturning older laws usually based on common law precedents drawn at least partially from Biblical precedents. The rise of positive law, that is, law based on the changing needs of society rather than immutable principles, was championed by the influential American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and his philosophical heirs such as Felix Frankfurter and Earl Warren.

The political left, both Marxists and democratic socialists, had had a symbiotic relationship with those who favored sexual liberation. The Greenwich Village district of New York City was America's foremost center of "avant garde" ideas in the early 1900s, where Communists like John Reed rubbed shoulders with playwrights like Eugene O'Neill and novelists like F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as feminists like Margaret Sanger. While Soviet Communism developed a puritan-like strain relative to sexuality, other Marxists belived that sexual freedom was a means to overturn bourgeois society and that restraint in sexual matters was a tool of repression by the ruling class. This was an aspect of the cultural Marxism espoused by the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci.

Marxist intellectuals such as Theodore Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Herbert Marcuse came to America in the 1930s one step ahead of the Nazis. They found their way into prestigious academic positions, whence they preached this Gramscian version of Communism. In particular, Marcuse was the godfather of the New Left, which encouraged the growth of the hippie movement and created the anti-Vietnam war movement, which helped subvert American will in that war, leading to the first war this nation lost. This New Left movement is where Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry first became involved in politics.

Until the last sentence, I have listed no person who could be considered a Baby Boomer. I did list two members of the G.I. Generation (Hugh Hefner and Helen Gurley Brown). Virtually all the others discussed were born in the 19th Century or earlier. Some, like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Antonio Gramsci, were dead well before V-J Day. The sexual revolution did not spring one day in 1961 from the dirty jokes of Lenny Bruce, the permissive child rearing books of Benjamin Spock, or the swiveling hips of Elvis Presley. Rather, it was the result of intellectual movements dating to the 18th Century and earlier that attempted to "liberate" society from the bondage of "superstitions" based on the Bible and Western tradition.

The culture wars that have been ongoing since the 1960s will not be won until the conservative opposition recognizes that merely repealing bad Supreme Court decisions or ensuring continued GOP control of the Presidency and Congress are not enough. The long march of secular humanism and statism must be ended by defeating the Left in the intellectual arena. The "ivory tower" sneered at by some conservatives is the control tower for society. The ivory towers, such as the prestigous universities, most of the think tanks, most of the tax free foundations, and even a large portion of the Fortune 500 board rooms, are in the hands of the enemies of traditional, Biblically based values and limited government. The battle for America will not be won until those ivory towers are no longer in the hands of liberals and secular humanists, irrespective of their age.

[mingusthecat]

ping

[elbucko]

The rise of rock music, derived in part from the blues, performed by black underworld figures who mimicked Gospel music and in part from Anglo-American "honky tonk," glorified blatant sexuality.

That sentence (and a few others), Wallace, renders your whole essay into a load of crap. Deep thought is truly, not your forte`.

[qam1]

Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social aspects that directly effects Gen-Reagan/Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) 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.

[Wallace T.]

Are you denying that rock music glorified sexual promiscuity far more than any type of popular American music that preceded it? Some music that preceded it also had immoral content (Hank Williams, Sr. comes to mind). However, rock music was the background noise of the cultural, political, and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s. The music is not evil per se, no more than are guns, alcohol, or anything else. It was the use to which it was put.

[hocndoc]

For a look at the nature of Boomers and their influence on the rest of society, I believe that the horrible Viagra ads on television are pathognomonic (sorry, that's just the right word - it means distinquishing characteristic of a disease).

I did not go to medical school to write performance boosters for healthy late 30-somethings (with perfectly normal functioning by history) and to explain to a 69 yo morbidly obese man with diabetes whose heart stopped 3 years ago - neither of whom is married - why Viagra is not appropriate for them (Mainly because it won't make a difference except risk side-effects) It cuts me to the quick to tell a 65 yo who just had radical prostate surgery that it will not help him and his wife and to try to discuss "other ways" with him. (And we still don't have anything more effective that the old myth of a Coke and aspirin for women who aren't in the mood or don't want to learn "other ways.")


End Rant

[Wallace T.]

FWIW, none of the examples you cite would fall into the category of Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 (though some would say that 1942 is a better starting point) and 1964. The healthy late-30 somethings would be early members of Generation X. The 65 and 69 year olds would be classified as part of the Silent (pre-Boom, post G.I) Generation.

The musicians that entertained the Boomers were often pre-Boomer themselves: the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones, for example. The political leaders admired by large numbers of Boomers, whether liberals like Robert Kennedy and George McGovern or radicals like Abbie Hoffman and Ramsey Clark, were men of the Silent or G.I. Generations. Indeed, many, if not most, of the leaders of the New Left of the 1960s were "red diaper babies," sons or daughters of Communist or other leftist families who were immersed in Marxist and materialist dogma from childhood.

The New Left and the cultural revolution have deep roots dating well before the G.I.'s returned from Europe and Asia to raise families.

[elbucko]

It was the use to which it was put.

I beg your pardon , but that concept is a bit conspiratorial.

But you're not the first person to believe that music was more than it actually was. After the battle of Culloden, Scotland in 1746, the English banned the Bagpipe and the Kilt as influencing the Scots to violence towards the English. In the "Act of Proscription", the English made it a capital crime to be found with or playing a bagpipe or wearing a kilt. Now, the Queen has her own "Piper", in ready at Buckingham or Balmoral and I have played "Amazing Grace", on the bagpipe in church, more times than you have sung it!

You're not the first to mistake ubiquity for causality. And sadly, you won't be the last.

Moreover, your indictment of "The Age of Enlightenment" as the beginning of our troubles is beyond serious ken. How dare you, Sir! Until Hume, Bacon and Locke, the only men considered close to God were Kings and Popes. The Enlightenment rendered this concept of the "Divine Right of Kings" to be as bogus as your interpretation of music and history.

When you're King, what, by your divine right as you see it, are you going to ban?

[elbucko]

Indeed, many, if not most, of the leaders of the New Left of the 1960s were "red diaper babies," sons or daughters of Communist or other leftist families who were immersed in Marxist and materialist dogma from childhood.

Now that's a statement I can hang my hat on. Especially if you mean the Eastern European immigrants that came to the US prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Many of these immigrants were socialists and Marxists and were bent on fomenting the unrest that preceded the revolution in Russia. They felt that they had missed the boat at home and began to link up with their soviet cousins to turn the US into a satellite of Moscow. Michael Newdow, of "God in the Pledge" fame, is a descendent of one of these Marxists. His agenda, knowing this fact, is not surprising.

I am much more interested in the socialist/communist influences in the State Department, like Algier Hiss and Treasury, like Harry Dexter White, than I am on the coincidence of the rise "Righteous Brothers" and un-wed mothers.

[elbucko]

Some music that preceded it also had immoral content (Hank Williams, Sr. comes to mind).

Such as?

[Rockingham]

You are mostly on the mark and make an important and overlooked point about the deep antecedents of our culture's ills. But here is where the baby boomers justly have much to answer for: they were not innocents drifting with the current set by prior generations, but passionate advocates who deliberately opposed and set out to destroy much of what their parents stood for and lived by.

The typical boomer of 60's was characteristically spoiled, vain, self-indulgent, and shallow. Given so much, boomers believed that to be a mark of their great worth rather than a gift made possible by the achievement and sacrifice of their parents and country.

Even today, baby boomer thinking shows those traits, even when inferentially repudiating their own past conduct. Kerry, for example, postures as a Viet Nam Audie Murphy, as if his own public calumnies against his fellow soldiers had never been spoken. A mature and wiser man would have admitted his errors and spoken of his Viet Nam combat service as the better part of what he had done in life, perhaps even leading his own party and generation to reconciliation and insight.

The boomer view of sex and family has been especially pernicious and lasting in its destructive influence, with laissez faire sex not just endorsed but seen as an entitlement. One has to be oblivious these days not to see the damage and to marvel at the perplexity of boomer parents trying to make and enforce rules on their own teenagers without the authority of religion or generally accepted moral norms.

There is a profound intellectual and moral confusion in people who think that high school rifle teams are dangerous because they promote gun violence, but that condom promotions and laissez faire sex ed for high school students are incontestable good sense. Abortion on demand, of course, even without parental knowledge or consent, must be maintained as a right because it is the remedy for inconvenient pregnancy and essential to the boomer ideology of sex and marriage.

The same reasoning and dynamic have played themselves out with drug use, with boomer endorsement of drug use now turning to parental fear of the consequences in their own progeny. The boomer parent is without the benefit of the religious and personal ethic that abuse of one's body is an offense against God and nature.

Conservatives characteristically prove ineffective in opposing such trends or even understanding them in the larger society because our first reaction is to attempt to reverse them using arguments that have already lost their force. We conservatives have a disabling tendency toward trying to convince others of the merit of lost causes and lost arguments.

That does not work because we live in history, borne along by a moving stream. There is never a way back from calamaties, only a way forward, toward recovery if we are perceptive and fortunate.

Blasting rock music as self-indulgent and promiscuous is just such a lost cause, and music is hardly the well-spring of our cultural decline. Generational dynamics, bad education, bad public policy, and bad ideas are the root causes. That is where our efforts should be directed: fashion arguments that convince others who are not inclined to agree with us, win elections, and win legislative and policy battles.

The facts of life are unalterably conservative, with a mass of scientific studies now in favor of what boomers rejected: the most and best sex is in faithful, enduring, and caring marriages; the most satisfying and nurturing relationships are in traditional families; religion gives means and purpose to life and makes for happiness and success; alcohol in moderation has health benefits, but damn near every illegal drug risks lasting damage to the brain and mind; phonics and rote learning work and offer benefits that newer educational methods are incapable of; welfare creates dependency and social decay that extends over generations; permissive parenting and school discipline and soft on crime law enforcement empowers bullies and psychopaths to prey on the weak.

Spare a moment to pity the boomers of today. Yes, they won the culture war, but now live directly amidst wreckage of their own making. In second and third marriages, or divorced and lonely, with their kids surly, ungrateful, in rehab, degreed but poorly educated, illegitimate offspring cluttering the family tree, and generally sensing that their waning lives have been a failure, and thinking that their college protest marches were their best moments.

Then the boomer looks across the fence at their young oddball neighbors: squares in long and happy marriages, kids neat and well behaved, in parochial schools or taught at home, a whole little nest of believing church goers. And then there are the cruel chastisements that the boomer of today must frequently experience: the grandson who joins the Marines; the grandaughter who insists on a church wedding -- and please do not bring your live-in gramps; and, horror of horrors, when they visit, their cars have Bush stickers.

Conservatives ought not to be gloomy: we are winning ground, even in the culture wars, and with battle still upon us, we are called to faith and hope, even if not always to victory.

[Wallace T.]

Your illustration of bagpipes as identified with Scottish nationalism is a useful analogy for rock music and the cultural, political, and sexual revolutions of the 1960s. During the Middle Ages, bagpipes were played throughout Europe, including very un-Celtic places like Sicily. Because they survived mostly in the Celtic fringe (Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Galicia, etc.) after 1700, they became identified with the Celtic peoples in their conflicts with their larger Anglo-Saxon and Latin neighbors. Likewise, many of the prominent rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s were clearly leftist in their politics and hedonist in their moral views. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, et. al., would fall into this category.

But there is a fundamental difference in the respective causes symbolized by bagpipe music and rock music. Scottish independence from from English domination was a just cause and a moral one. Advocating removal of American military and political power from engagement with the Communist powers and supporting the overturning of Christian and Western moral codes and Constitutional government were neither just nor moral.

[Wallace T.]

Try "Honky Tonkin'"

[gcruse]

The long march of secular humanism and statism must be ended by defeating the Left in the intellectual arena.

Defeating secular humanism intellectually by appealing to religion will be as successful as brightening a room by turning out the lights.

[elbucko]

Scottish independence from from English domination was a just cause and a moral one.

I suppose one could conclude the above. But it was treason to the English. In reality, the Jacobites fought for one king over another, not real "Liberty". Furthermore, I don't need a history lesson on the bagpipe or Celtic peoples, since I teach the blasted bags and still have kith in Scotland and kin Ireland. I have known the Celtic history of both since a youth. If the Scots weren't already mad at the English, then the only thing a piper could do would be to play music that might cause people to feel like dancing. The pipes do not induce war in the otherwise placid.

I will however, admit that as far as rock music is concerned, its appeal for me died with the drug use and the Vietnam War. But I don't think it is rock music that causes communism any more than I think that church hymns cause chastity. I think you are stretching for a conclusion that does not exist.

A more realistic conclusion for an essay on the turmoil of the 60's would be that the "Red Diaper Babies" had finally graduated, en-mass, from college. Their fathers political actions had been restrained in the 50's by blue collar jobs and fear of McCarthy (who was right). As well, the "Free Speech", Civil Rights and the ACLU's movement came of age in the 60's, prodded on by agents of the Soviet Union recently freed from Stalin. The music, whatever form it took, was just there.

Advocating removal of American military and political power from engagement with the Communist powers and supporting the overturning of Christian and Western moral codes and Constitutional government were neither just nor moral.

Agreed. But the real reason most of the kids advocated the song sung by the left was that they just did not want to die in Vietnam. It's hard for a 19-25 year old man/boy to admit he's scared to die, so he makes up a high moral excuse. I know about that too. I was drafted in 1967. I spent 6 years in the Army and 2 in the Nat. Guard. Therefore, I find your desire to blame the moral decline of the USA in the 60's and 70's on some such complex phenomena as a colusion of Age of Enlightenment and Rock Music a bit perverse (actually the music of the communist was folk music, not "rock"). But methinks, youthinks too much about too little. In reading your essay, it's no wonder that the Left thinks that conservatives are crazy. I have doubt about you, myself. My conclusion, based on the subjects of your essay, is that you don't know how to dance.

BTW, my parents were acquainted with Hank Williams, as they were Leonard Sly, better known as Roy Rogers. My father referred to Williams as a severely un-happy man. Today we would call it depression. Why don't you leave judgement up to the almighty and try a shot at helping your fellow man, rather than condemning him with your bogus theories.

[Wallace T.]

The first definition of "religious" in The Merriam-Webster On Line Dictionary is: "relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity." To the secular humanist, paraphrasing Carl Sagan, the material universe is all there ever was, is, or will be. Thus, secular humanism is a type of religious belief as much as are Buddhism, Christian Science, paganism, etc. Do you mean, defeating a religious belief which believes solely in the existence of a material world is impossible for a religious belief that holds to the existence of the supernatural and/or a Supreme Being?

[elbucko]

Some music that preceded it also had immoral content (Hank Williams, Sr. comes to mind).

Such as?

Try "Honky Tonkin'"

OK!

HONKY TONKIN'
Words and music by Hank Williams, Sr.

When you are sad and lonely and have no place to go
Call me up, sweet baby, and bring along some dough
And we'll go Honky Tonkin', Honky Tonkin'
Honky Tonkin', Honey Baby
We'll go Honky Tonkin' 'round this town.

When you and your baby have a fallin' out
Just call me up sweet mama and we'll go steppin' out
And we'll go Honky Tonkin', Honky Tonkin'
Honky Tonkin', Honey Baby
We'll go Honky Tonkin' 'round this town.

We're goin' to the city - to the city fair
If you go to the city then you will find me there
And we'll go Honky Tonkin', Honky Tonkin'
Honky Tonkin', Honey Baby
We'll go Honky Tonkin' 'round this town.

My God, you're kidding! You find sordid sin and flesh pot shenanigans in this late 1940's favorite? I'll admit it's not Mozart, but it's not Tupac Shakur, either. Quite frankly, I don't think you have ever heard or seen the lyrics of "Honkey Tonk".

[gcruse]

Do you mean, defeating a religious belief which believes solely in the existence of a material world is impossible for a religious belief that holds to the existence of the supernatural and/or a Supreme Being?

I mean using illogic to defeat something logical is doomed at the start.  There is nothing logical about religion.  The intellectualization of denominations is nothing more than counting angels on pinheads.  Supernaturalism is not based on anything intellectual or material, therefore using it to attack secular humanism, which is based on intellect and reality, is not going to work.

[Willie Green]

Yes, I'm afraid so.
Boomers are the worst self-absorbed plague of spoiled brats to have ever been unleashed upon mankind.
I'm embarassed that I'm one of 'em.

[Wallace T.]

I have not stated that bagpipes cause warlike attitudes or that rock music causes communism. That is a false inference. As an analogy, you have emphasized the role of the "red diaper babies" for the rise of the New Left in two posts. Many, if not most, of the "red diaper babies" came from ethnically (though not religiously) Jewish households. Since you stress the role of these largely Jewish activists in the leftist activities of the 1960s, should I then assume you are an anti-Semite and a conspiracy theorist to boot? After all, you might have heard the "Jews are the cause of communism" position from Liberty Lobby or the Ku Klux Klan. Such inferences would be specious. But then again, so is your statement that "I can't dance". Whether I dance or not is irrelevant. But if you goose step to the "Horst Wessel Lied," that would be very relevant!

There is a long gap of over two centuries between the French philosophes and the leftists of the 1960s antiwar movement who later cut their hair, shaved their beards, and put on suits and ties, the better to penetrate politics, academia, the tax-free foundations, and think tanks. We did not go directly from the French encyclopedists to the Beatles. However, there is a common thread of philosophy and worldview that links the ideas of Rousseau and Voltaire to the leftists of our day. Ayn Rand, in her commentary on the "Free Speech" movement at Berkeley in 1964, noted the same continuity. She titled her observations, "Mario Savio, Son of Immanuel Kant."