You’re Messing With the Wrong Generation (Quintuple Barf Alert!)

We were born at the end of World War II to a generation that had just won a war against pure evil. We were their hope for a brighter future. The forbearers of a new era. An era of peace and prosperity. An era of fun. We had hula-hoops, silly putty, slinkies and slip 'n slides. We ate Spaghetti-o's, Alphabits, TV dinners and Spam. We watched Ed Sullivan, I Love Lucy, The Flintstones and American Bandstand. We witnessed the first manned space flight and prayed for Apollo 13. We saw a man step onto the moon and suffered through the tragedy of the space shuttle Challenger. We danced the jitterbug, the mashed potato and the twist and listened to Murray the K, Porky Chedwick, and Wolfman Jack. We brought you the Beatles, Motown, Bob Dylan, Sonny & Cher, Rock and Roll, R&B and Woodstock. We inspired movies like Grease, The Graduate, Animal House, and American Graffiti and TV shows like Happy Days, Laugh-In, The Wonder Years and Saturday Night Live. We were there when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and we saw the first black students walk into their federally desegregated college. We heard Martin Luther King say "I have a dream" and then we watched as he was gunned down. We witnessed the murders of JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, Bobby Kennedy and John Lennon and the premature deaths of Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Elvis.

But, through all of this, what stood out most of all, what came into our living rooms night after night right along with Bonanza and The Wonderful World of Disney, was war. A war that was happening half way across the world complete with visions of napalmed children, self-immolating monks and huge helicopters flying over palm trees. We asked our parents what was going on but they didn't have very good answers. We asked our teachers the same question but never got very satisfactory replies. Then as we got older and started demanding to know what you were doing over there, you said, "None of your business. Shut up and register for the draft." It didn't take long before it was us you were sending over there and we were forced to take to the streets shouting, "Hell no, we won't go," and singing, "All we are saying is give peace a chance." We dropped out, grew our hair, dressed, danced, sang, played music, made love, got high and changed all the rules with only one thing in mind… to get your attention and show you that it's possible to end war and live in peace. And when we were done, it was over. We had won. Do you know who we are? We're Greasers, Hoods, Beatniks, Long Hairs, Freaks, Hippies and Yuppies.

Now there's a new war. Well, it's not really new. It's the same old song and dance, really. The same old lies and fabrications. Just history repeating itself thanks to those who, if they ever did learn it, seem to have forgotten. So once again, millions of us all over the world tried to tell you, "Hell no, we won't go," and "Please, please give peace a chance." But you didn't listen. You invaded a country. You destroyed homes, cities, schools, power plants, palaces, museums and hospitals. You killed thousands and thousands of innocent people and hundreds of good kids who were willing to give their lives for their country. And this time, when we asked you why, you told us it was to give them something you call "freedom". But, you see, we don't think the kind of freedom you're talking about is actually real freedom at all. In fact, we don't think the people in that country are feeling anything that even remotely resembles freedom right now. We think they're feeling devastated. We think they're feeling fear and horror. We think they're wondering where their children are and where they're going to sleep tonight and how they're going to get food and water and shelter from the sweltering desert sun. And we're almost positive that if they did this to us, you wouldn't call it freedom. You'd call it terrorism. Oh, and one other thing. A long time ago there were these smart men who, unlike you, cared about our country and its future. And they predicted that people like you would come along and try to use something called a "military-industrial complex" to acquire even more money than you already had. We don't know exactly what that is but it sounds a lot like what you're doing when you give huge, expensive contracts to your friends to re-build things that you actually destroyed.

So here's the thing. We're tired of being lied to over and over, day after day, while the rest of the world looks on in pity and disgust and we'd just like you to know a few things. We think your war stinks. It stinks of lies and greed and murder and stupidity. There's no honor, no truth, no accountability, no remorse. In college we learned that people like you are called sociopaths but we think you're just plain evil. So we just wanted to give you a heads up and let you know…we're baaaaack. That's right. Remember us? The Hippies and the Freaks? Well, we're the Baby Boomers now. And, guess what? We're all grown up and we have money…and not only that, one of us is going to be the next president. So fasten your seat belts kids. It's gonna be a bumpy ride. And any day now you're going to figure out that things aren't as hunky-dory as you thought they were because, as much as you tried to pull the wool over everybody's eyes and get rich quick off your dirty little war, it just ain't gonna happen. Why? Because, plain and simple, you're messing with the wrong generation.

Ms. Burgwin’s writing has appeared in Newsweek, Time, New York Magazine, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Tribune Review as well as several online Op Ed sites. She is also involved in gay rights, women’s issues and the environment. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family

Exactly it doesn't say that, Thanks for pointing out you were wrong

You cannot possibly be THAT dumb.

So please enlighten me, Give me an issue

Well you been shown a link about Pataki's gun grabbing so you can scratch that

Taxes?

LOL! New York has the highest taxes in the country on everything except marshmallows

Spending?

Don't think so.

Under Pataki New York even though it has ~15 million fewer people it still spends more than California. In 2002 Both New York and California spent $90 Billion dollars. In 2003 with both facing huge deficits Grey Davis at least proposed some cuts while Pataki even with NY facing a $10 Billion dollar deficit actually increased spending by $3 Billion.

And that $90 Billion number is actually way more since unlike California which has Prop. 13 Pataki can and does push massive unfunded mandates onto the counties (most notably Medicaid). Almost every county in NY has had double digit property tax increases consecutively the past couple of years.

BTW Texas with population just little above NY spends $67 Billion, And their counties do not have anywhere near the big property tax burdens like NY. Let me assure you the difference between NY and California and Texas is not due to the cost of snow removal.

Socialized Medicine?

The only difference between Pataki and Hillary is Hillary wanted to socialize medicine but failed while Pataki is actually doing it!!!!!

Right now 1/6 New Yorkers are on the state medicaid dole with more to come because even with a $10 Billion deficit Pataki still plans on adding 720,000 more people onto the state doles via his Family health Plus and Healthy NY medicaid schemes. http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/fhplus/index.htm

Environment,

2 words, "Forever Wild" 'nuff said.

A FYI, It's not because of the legislators because the Republicans have a big majority (38-24) in the Senate and they to voted unanimously to increase spending and raise taxes. The Senate Republicans consistently vote unanimously on Liberal tax/spend/regulate schemes, Not one of the 38 Senators can be considered anything like Conservative, All of them without exception are RINOS to say the least, Each one of them if they were in another state's legislative body (and that includes the ones controlled by Democrats) would be the most Liberal member. (To be fair, There are some good Republicans in the NYS State Assembly though they are in the minority)

A little more on the insanity of New York

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/970596/posts

Knock yourself out and please give me an issue.

It is no secret that many boomers are conservative and have been most of our lives. I was born in '56 and am quite ashamed to be associated with the likes of most publicized boomers.

It is also no secret that even more boomers are liberal, and it is those boomer liberals that dominate the public schools, government bureacracies, and policy making positions in government and business. Even the Republican party is top-heavy with neo-cons who are simply liberals that got mugged.

The conservative boomers have not had, and do not have sufficient numbers to force constructive changes in our "tax, spend, and regulate" government.

However, change is coming. The Gen-X people who are paying attention are well into their careers, have families, and are trending more conservative. The Gen-Y college students today are trending conservative and driving their professors to tears.

The liberal Gen-X and Gen-Y potential voters comprise a much, much smaller force.

If the conservative boomers make the effort to look past their own age group, they will see the opportunity for constructive change that exists in staying conservative, rather than compromising with the left-drifting neo-cons.

As soon as 2008, the voting numbers can solidly be on the conservative side -- not the mushy middle, and not the liberal left.

Smaller government, low and simple taxes, sunsetting laws, disappearing regulations, and a booming business and economy -- all these and more are possible with a combination of conservative boomers and conservative Gen-X, and the even more conservative Gen-Y voters.

A little infighting is good for the spirits, but let's keep the artillery pointed at the really bad guys.

Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society, 1962

Courtesy Office of Sen. Tom Hayden.

THE PORT HURON STATEMENT OF THE STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introductory Note: This document represents the results of several months of writing and discussion among the membership, a draft paper, and revision by the Students for a Democratic Society national convention meeting in \cf2 Port Huron\cf0 , Michigan, June 11-15, 1962. It is represented as a document with which SDS officially identifies, but also as a living document open to change with our times and experiences. It is a beginning: in our own debate and education, in our dialogue with society.

published and distributed by Students for a Democratic Society 112 East 19 Street New York 3, New York GRamercy 3-2181

INTRODUCTION: AGENDA FOR A GENERATION

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.

When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world: the only one with the atom bomb,

Lie #1:

The Soviet Atomic Bomb: 1939-1949

The most significant early work on fission in the Soviet Union was performed by Yakov Zel'dovich and Yuli Khariton who published a series of papers in 1939-41 that laid the groundwork for later Soviet atomic weapons development.

The Soviet weapons program proper began in 1943 during World War II, under the leadership of physicist Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov. The program was initiated by reports collected by Soviet intelligence about the rapidly growing Manhattan Project in the U.S. It remained largely an intelligence operation until the end of the war, but it was a highly successful one, due to sympathies of many for the wartime Soviet Union fighting Nazi Germany; the socialist political sympathies of some; and the weak security screening program necessitated by the hasty assembly of the vast program. Klaus Fuchs, an important physicist at Los Alamos, was by far the most valuable contributor of atomic information. First Lightning/"Joe-1": The First Soviet Atomic Explosion

Test: First Lightning/"Joe-1"

Time: 07:00 29 August 1949 (local)

Location: Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan

Test Height and Type: Tower

Yield: 22 Kt

The first Soviet nuclear test, code named "First Lightning", detonated a plutonium bomb, the RDS-1. The code designation RDS was actually arbitrary and meaningless, but various people on the project gave it a variety of interpretations, one popular one was "Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina" (Stalin's Rocket Engine), another was "Russia Does It Alone". The whole focus of the Soviet program at this point was to set off a Soviet atomic blast at the earliest possible time whatever the cost. At Beria's insistence, this device was an exact copy of the U.S. Gadget/Fat Man design.

the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people -- these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing in complacency.

As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb, brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other human problems, but not these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution.

While these and other problems either directly oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our own subjective concerns, we began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The declaration "all men are created equal . . . rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of the North. The proclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military investments in the Cold War status quo.

We witnessed, and continue to witness, other paradoxes. With nuclear energy whole cities can easily be powered, yet the dominant nationstates seem more likely to unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars of human history. Although our own technology is destroying old and creating new forms of social organization, men still tolerate meaningless work and idleness. While two-thirds of mankind suffers undernourishment, our own upper classes revel amidst superfluous abundance. Although world population is expected to double in forty years, the nations still tolerate anarchy as a major principle of international conduct and uncontrolled exploitation governs the sapping of the earth's physical resources. Although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leadership, America rests in national stalemate, its goals ambiguous and tradition-bound instead of informed and clear, its democratic system apathetic and manipulated rather than "of, by, and for the people."

Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of American ideals was discovered, but we began to sense that what we had originally seen as the American Golden Age was actually the decline of an era. The worldwide outbreak of revolution against colonialism and imperialism, the entrenchment of totalitarian states, the menace of war, overpopulation, international disorder, supertechnology -- these trends were testing the tenacity of our own commitment to democracy and freedom and our abilities to visualize their application to a world in upheaval.

Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority -- the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through", beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change.

Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity -- but might it not better be called a glaze above deeplyfelt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today. On such a basis do we offer this document of our convictions and analysis: as an effort in understanding and changing the conditions of humanity in the late twentieth century, an effort rooted in the ancient, still unfulfilled conception of man attaining determining influence over his circumstances of life.

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