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re: 15 to 34 in 1960

I'm a 1963 HS grad and in that group. I'm a little older than a boomer, so got a career and preparation for retirement when it was doable. Our culture was fun when we grew up. We and our children got education without loans, jobs we could depend on, and a whole lot of freedom, independence and opportunity. Our world was mostly safe and our country was secure. We're pretty healthy as a group.

I call us the luckiest generation that ever lived on earth. But something else...we had the chance to work for a living and take personal responsibility for our lives, and most in our age group have done that.

Just did my 50th HS reunion and am feeling a bit sad and nostalgic for everything we had. As a group, we still keep the life view of our youths. How did our country go so wrong in just 50 years?

I'm a 1963 HS grad... Our culture was fun when we grew up... education without loans, jobs we could depend on, and a whole lot of freedom, independence and opportunity.

'61 grad, here. I heartily concur. America was the land of opportunity in those days. Everyone worked (I started when I was 12, but also had a paper route before that) and that was encouraged by parents and also the laws. I bought my first high powered hunting rifle through the mail when I was 14 although I also owned a .22 and a shotgun by then which I had bought locally and legally as did my friends. Nobody ever heard of school shootings in those days.

Our world was mostly safe and our country was secure...

I have to disagree here. The Soviet Union was a HUGE threat in these years, and for years afterward.

How did our country go so wrong in just 50 years?

There is lots of blame to go around here.

First, a 1962 Supreme Court decision took God out of the schools. Things started turning sour quickly after that. Then, Kennedy was assassinated. That prevented Barry Goldwater from being President. We got LBJ and the Great Society and the Vietnam War, instead. We also got massive culture rot with the anti-war crowd, drugs, and Hippies. Then the Liberals took over almost all our major institutions.

Aside from a temporary restoration under Ronald Reagan, it has been pretty much down hill ever since.

IMHO, we lost our way and our Divine blessings when we threw God out of the public square and began building our own Tower Of Babel.

As a reminder though, remember that the "silent generation" was the generation of the 1960s, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Joan Baez, Bill Alinsky and Bernadette Dohrn, Jane Fonda, The Chicago Seven, Janis Joplin, Bob Seeger, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Van Morrison, Jim Morrison and so on, just about everyone that a person thinks was a boomer during the 1960s, was not a boomer at all.

According to the Selective Service System, from 1954 through 1963 (peacetime) they drafted 1,327,343 men for military service, from 1964 through 1973 (Vietnam War), they drafted 1,840,650 men, the Cold War was raging and dangerous.

If you want some eye opening reminders of how much conflict was going on in 1950s and 1960s America, look at the activities of the 101st Airborne and the 82nd Airborne being called into service in some cities and states in America during those years.

The 101st Screaming Eagles in America, during the 1950s.