Better Face It Millennials: You Didn’t Get What You Were Promised

Townhall ^ | 8-26-13 | Morgan Brittany

[Nowhere Man]

True, being born in your case, in 1956, I think you missed most of the “Boomer Experience” as generally seen by society. By the mid 1970’s, the country was tired from all the radicalism and change of the 1960’s and wanted to settle down into the disco 1970’s.

[Patriotic1]

Some info on that picture?

[Nowhere Man]

According to the FR open border free trade club you father was supposed to retrain to do brain surgery after being freed up from mundane manufacturing work

True. We shot ourselves in the foot on this one.

I know maybe being the only major power after WWII that was not blown to bits to one degree or another was a big help too, but I think our policies hurt us big time too. We have too much regulation, taxes, unions wanting the Moon and so on that hurt us big time. The other side too is the adherence to the idea of global free trade. In an ideal situation, free trade is the best idea, but we live in a world that is real, not ideal. Most nations, like people, protect their own interests and this includes their economies. We do not do the same and we have become chumps because of it.

[DH]

I think you kind of missed the part that the government played.

[grania]

I realize all of those things such as equal rights for blacks, opportunity not spreading to all of the population and the aftermath of WWII were part of our era. You mention the great singers...they were all ethnic groups, and were bringing us to a new place as a nation. But something happened that when the problems were solved, the government just didn't know when to stop.

Ours was the creative generation. We're not boomers, or we're the very oldest of boomers, so most of us have parents who didn't serve in WWII. We had the advantages of a growing economy and the memory that in the US there was the strongest connection possible between hard work and success. There weren't enough of us, so we had great career choices.

Then crazy stuff happened. VietNam, excessive government interference, "rights" and handouts instead of opportunities. The people got addicted, the rich began to care only about getting richer, the government wanted to control and manipulate everyone and everything.

And now we have idiot politicians talking about a war to save the presidency from embarrasment. We used to (maybe until VietNam) at least accept that we went to war because it was the moral thing to do.

I'm feeling a sadness today. Nobody in government is even pretending that there's anything about this warmongering that supports anything close to our traditional values. Particularly pathetic is that the politicians of our generation, the ones that should know better, are the worst of the sellouts.

[9YearLurker]

Agreed.

(But it’s particularly silly of young conservatives to blame their elders for our situation when it is their age cohort who voted for Obama.)

[Nowhere Man]

I respect that. I do have differences with Libertarians, but there are plenty of grounds upon which Conservatives and Libertarians agree -- we should work on what we share and put off till tomorrow the ideas that divide us.

Agreed. I'll be honest, I know myself, I tend to be not as socially conservative as many are on here, I'm more fiscally conservative. Things like the marriage debate are non issues to me, should be left up to the States and the people to decide although no one should be forced to go against their conscience. I am socially conservative on a personal level, I just think it is not the province of government to get involved, in short, I'm a Ron/Rand Paul type. I did vote for Romney though, I do realize we need to work together and sometimes you have to bend a bit knowing that you'll get at least 80% of what you want. I'd rather get 80% or even 50% or 60% than none at all.

We have huge problems here, the economy, kicking hornets' nests in the Middle East, an anti-gun administration, crime and so on. We have limited resources and time so we need to make sure we apply our efforts into things that will count.

[ClearCase_guy]

+1

[ansel12]

When you think of immigration and the 1965 Immigration Act, think of John F. Kennedy.

From unionizing government, to Vietnam, to creating homelessness (Community Mental Health Act) to the 1965 Immigration Act, JFK was the end of us.

“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s. In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”

[ansel12]

“”Elements of the division’s 1st Airborne Battle Group, 327th Infantry were ordered to Little Rock by President Eisenhower to allow the students to enter the formerly segregated school during the crisis. The division was under the command of Major General Edwin Walker, who was committed to protecting the black students. The troops were deployed from September until Thanksgiving 1957, when Task Force 153rd Infantry, (federalized Arkansas Army National Guard) which had also been on duty at the school since 24 September, assumed the responsibility.””

[Nowhere Man]

I often wonder if things would have gotten this far had JFK lived and/or he just did not go to Dallas that day. The reason why he is seen as almost as a "demi-ghod" is because he was cut down in his prime. Had he go onto 1964, Maybe Goldwater would have beaten him, maybe not, but I think a second JFK term, a lot of the bloom would have been off the flower by then. I think a second thing that hurt us is that the Civil Rights movement became more group politic instead of individualistic. Groupism became the downfall of us and the Civil Right Bill and Immigration Bills of 1964/1965 were part of all of that. It became a license for groups to go after individuals, businesses and other groups almost as an act of revenge and to get even and here we are today.

Think of all the idolizing of Lincoln, JFK, RFK and MLK because they were cut down in their prime. Everytime I hear Dion's song, "Abraham, Martin and John," I have to puke, roll my eyes and switch frequencies on the radio. Otherwise I'd have a big hole in my dashboard and I do not want to break my Blazer's stereo system, it is a Bose. B-)

[Vermont Lt]

Well, no.

You can ridicule the science of it. You clearly do not want to take it seriously because it doesn’t apply to YOU.

Fair enough. But just because you don’t believe it doesnt make it not real.

[Revolting cat!]

What science, Einstein? A linguistic euphemism is invented by some clever joker and you c all it ‘science’? Back to school.

[Vermont Lt]

Do some reading, fool.

Studies on Generational Social Norms has been going on for decades.

My God, stop being so sensitive. Just because you are ignorant, don’t feel bad. Most people are.

This stuff is used in marketing—and has been since the beginning of time. How do you think that advertisers know how to “push the buttons” of the masses? You think they just keep guessing until they get it right?

Science is not always in a chemistry lab. Psychologists actually do real science.

[ansel12]

I don’t see JFK as being cut down in his prime, I see him as 3/4s through his administration and a proven disaster.

[Gritty]

When you think of immigration and the 1965 Immigration Act, think of John F. Kennedy.

JFK's tenure was a disaster. He was Jimmah Cahtah without the moral snottyness but instead with the morals of an alley cat and the strategic vision of a caterpillar. It is hard to think of a decision he made which ended well. We barely escaped nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

But then, I can't think of a single Democrat President in the past 100 years who was worth a pitcher of warm spit, including the vaunted Harry Truman. He was the one who first decided the best way to fight an American war was to a draw. We are still living with that awful template.