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Infantile America
Men's News Daily ^ | 8/16/07 | Thomas Brewton

Posted on 08/16/2007 4:00:16 PM PDT by qam1

Collapse of the subprime mortgage market reflects the "don't trust anybody over 30" mentality of the Baby Boomers.

From 1605 until the late 1960s, Americans universally subscribed to Benjamin Franklin's maxim,"A penny saved is a penny earned." Since the Baby Boomer student anarchism of the late 1960s and 1970s, we have become a nation, on balance, worshiping infantile, instant, hedonistic gratification.

Liberals’ ideas about “values” have to do with the absence of personal restraints and with material goods and services, which is what the welfare state is all about. Values for the colonists were the elements of spiritual morality, the intangible qualities that differentiated humans from other animals.

The values of 1776 preached individual self-restraint, self-reliance, and hard work for the future of one’s family. Liberal values give us what has been called a juvenocracy, a society dominated by the heedless pursuit of instant gratification that is characteristic of inexperienced youth: devil take the hindmost; eat, drink, and be merry.

The current generation are less to blame than their Baby Boomer teachers who fancied themselves so smart that they didn't need education. Their mission was to take control of universities, eradicate the classical curriculum that transmitted the values of Western civilization, and to replace it with "relevant" subjects, i.e., the ideology of socialism's revolutionary social justice.

That brand of social justice preaches that everyone is entitled, indeed has a Constitutional right, to an equal share of society's goods and services, without having first to work and save to acquire the objects of their desires.

Yes, unsophisticated home buyers failed to understand what would happen to mortgage payments when interest rates rose. But more fundamentally, they failed to grasp that jobs can be lost, and anticipated salary increases might not come to pass; that elementary prudence demands having the wherewithal to pay before your buy, as well as having a cash reserve to carry you over emergency periods. Schooled by Baby Boomer "respected educators," they believed that it is their right to indulge to any extent and rely upon the Federal government to bail them out.

What I wrote in A Divided Nation Without God applies to our economic juvenocracy. In Beyond Good and Evil (1885), speaking of the ethos prevailing in Western Europe (what we witness today in the United States as a cultural war between Judeo-Christian traditionalists and liberal-progressive, atheistic materialists), Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

Anarchists in 1885 were savagely antagonistic to this [original laissez-faire] liberal faith in “progress”

...and even more to the bungling philosophasters and brotherhood-visionaries who call themselves Socialists and desire a “free society” – but in actuality the anarchists are of the same breed, of the same thorough and instinctive hostility against any social structure other than that of the “autonomous” herd (they go so far as to reject the concepts of “master” and “servant” – [Neither God nor Master] is one of the Socialist slogans)...

...they are one in their faith in the morality of commonly felt compassion as though this feeling constituted morality itself, as though it were the summit, the attained summit of mankind, the only hope for the future, the consolation of the living, the great deliverance from all the guilt of yore – they are all one in their faith in fellowship as that which will deliver them, their faith in the herd, in other words, in “themselves”...

Nietzsche could easily have been describing today’s “educated” young people coming out of our colleges and universities, having been thoroughly inculcated with the anti-American, atheistic, and philosophically materialistic religious views of the Vietnam War Baby-Boomers who infest academia’s professoriats.

As many other observers have noted, our short-changed young graduates have been led to believe that universal indulgence in narcotics, sexual promiscuity, and rebellion against the nation’s founding traditions constitutes individuality: Nietzsche’s herd-mentality. Conformity to the latest media-communicated fad in dress, entertainment, and social justice ideas is “individuality.” The media bombard us with images of youth, turning society into an immature juvenocracy that worships only that which is novel and consciously rejects the wisdom of experience in past ages.

Nietzsche’s “commonly felt compassion as though this feeling constituted morality itself” is the doctrine enunciated by our first socialist Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. – truth is whatever wins out in the public market, whatever viewpoint the media can create in the minds of the majority of citizens.

Conspicuously absent is any sense of personal responsibility.

Blaming mortgage brokers for the subprime collapse is like blaming alcoholism on the distillers.


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: babyboomers; genx; growupalready; mortgage; selfishkiddies; z
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From an interview in 1964


21 posted on 08/16/2007 5:37:48 PM PDT by Syncro
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To: Billthedrill; FlyVet

Well that makes three of us that think alike. Probably more as I read on.


22 posted on 08/16/2007 5:45:30 PM PDT by Snoopers-868th
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To: Syncro

Rubin, the founding Yippie and Weinberg the ‘civil rights’ activist(nice catch btw)....neither one close to being a ‘boomer’.


23 posted on 08/16/2007 5:46:47 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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To: Billthedrill
IIRC, the greatest generation got social security and MediCare for nothing, discounted the property they bought with massive inflation, got their kids' college education for free, and wrote off every dime of consumer debt. They saddled their kids with the great society, allowed the communists to take over the universities, and gave us the UN.

Every generation has its Democrats, er, screw-ups. I guess it's the same thing.

24 posted on 08/16/2007 5:52:08 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (Islam offers three choices: fight, submit, or die.)
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To: wtc911

Wild In The Streets was not a TV Movie of the week. It was a standard theatrical release and spawned the hit single “Shapes of Things To Come” by “Max Frost and The Troopers”, the fictional band from the movie. It was followed up with Riot on Sunset Strip - more standard drive-in movie fare about Hippies written by the the over 30 ‘grown-up crowd’.


25 posted on 08/16/2007 5:59:12 PM PDT by Hoof Hearted (Run*Fred*Run)
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To: wtc911
LOL no and NO WAY even close to the Greatest Generation

: >)

Loved it that Rubin wrote a book and titled it “Steal This Book”


Ironically enough free for download on the internet now...

26 posted on 08/16/2007 6:00:42 PM PDT by Syncro
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To: Snoopers-868th
Well that makes three of us that think alike. Probably more as I read on.

Four.

When (way back) I was in high school, my family moved from Conservativesville in the American heartland to the left-fringe coastal region I was shocked not only at what my generation there were doing, but at the previous generation encouraging them on. Our teachers, our church ministers and other leaders...

Some of our generation didn't have much of a chance against all that.

27 posted on 08/16/2007 6:01:04 PM PDT by sionnsar (trad-anglican.faithweb.com |Iran Azadi| 5yst3m 0wn3d - it's N0t Y0ur5 (SONY) | UN: Useless Nations)
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To: Syncro
Loved it that Rubin wrote a book and titled it “Steal This Book”

That would be Abbie Hoffman.

Rubin wrote "Do It!"

28 posted on 08/16/2007 6:05:03 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (Islam offers three choices: fight, submit, or die.)
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To: sionnsar
I bought my first house on a 5 - 2 - 6 adjustable rate mortgage. It was 7.125% APR with no teaser rate and could only adjust every 5 years with a MAX 2% swing and 6% lifetime Cap. I could have taken a 1 year ARM at about 6.875% APR with a 6% CAP, but I did my research before buying.

To make a long story short, I was planning on getting out in less than 10 years. I stayed for 7, got adjusted up to 9.125% after 5 and paid an average APR of about 7.765%. If I took the Fixed 30 offered at the time of closing, I would have paid about 8.375APR for 7 years, if I had take the 1 year ARM I would have been bumped to at least 9% within 3 years and God knows what APR. So please tell me what I did wrong with my ARM, and why I shouldn’t have been offered it under any circumstances?

29 posted on 08/16/2007 6:06:19 PM PDT by Woodman ("One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives." PW)
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To: Syncro
I actually did steal that book.

btw...I was not implying that these two were 'greatest generation' although everyone (but a few actors) associated with the film that made the phrase popular was.

30 posted on 08/16/2007 6:06:27 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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To: Woodman
So please tell me what I did wrong with my ARM, and why I shouldn’t have been offered it under any circumstances?

Don't know why you think I'm against offering them, but in the circumstances of my purchases they'd have been extremely risky. Work it out carefully, as you did, and it's fine. But it can be a trap for the unwary.

31 posted on 08/16/2007 6:10:31 PM PDT by sionnsar (trad-anglican.faithweb.com |Iran Azadi| 5yst3m 0wn3d - it's N0t Y0ur5 (SONY) | UN: Useless Nations)
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To: Hoof Hearted

I must have seen it on TV a year or two later. btw...Riot on Sunset Strip with Aldo Ray was a year earlier, not later.


32 posted on 08/16/2007 6:11:40 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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To: Woodman

BTW, I didn’t run your numbers. I just accepted your claim that your analysis said you got a better deal. If so, good for you!


33 posted on 08/16/2007 6:12:37 PM PDT by sionnsar (trad-anglican.faithweb.com |Iran Azadi| 5yst3m 0wn3d - it's N0t Y0ur5 (SONY) | UN: Useless Nations)
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To: sionnsar

I am in middle Michigan. Born, raised and never moved away. The drug scene and the hippy scene never hit our area in any big way and when it did it I really don’t know how it presented itself. When I graduated I had never heard of marijuana and it was many years after before I did hear of it and certainly did not know where I could get it. This would have been too scarey for most in my time. What these generations think took place did not take place across this country. It took place in big cities not little bergs.

I resent the implication that baby boomers are the free love, flower children, commune living hippies that never outgrew that era. The majority of us DID NOT take part in what the documentaries depict. I never heard about Woodstock until it was a documentary on T.V. and I was not sheltered. It wasn’t something that was in our area—plain and simple. Getting drunk was a big deal in my time. I have no idea what was going on in Detroit or the resort towns. I was small town but this small town is no longer innocent and it was not my generation that brought in the evils.


34 posted on 08/16/2007 6:20:01 PM PDT by Snoopers-868th
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To: Carry_Okie
Oops thanks you're Right.

I had both of those esteemed *cough* "gentlemen" on my mind when I posted that.

Cut from the same cloth maybe, with a few remnants left over for Paul Krassner?

35 posted on 08/16/2007 6:22:42 PM PDT by Syncro
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To: wtc911
I actually did steal that book.

Great gimmick, moved a lot of books. LOL

It is Free Now

Correction caught by carry okie, it was Abbie Hoffman, not the sandwich guy.

36 posted on 08/16/2007 6:26:19 PM PDT by Syncro
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To: Syncro
Both Rubin and Hoffman were Yippies (Youth International Party) and both were in the Chicago 7 trial.

I'm betraying my misspent youth.

37 posted on 08/16/2007 6:33:25 PM PDT by Carry_Okie (Islam offers three choices: fight, submit, or die.)
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To: Snoopers-868th
I'm with you. I remember the first time I heard of someone "smokin' grass." I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to smoke...um...grass. SmileyCentral.com LOL!
38 posted on 08/16/2007 6:35:30 PM PDT by CremeSaver
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To: Syncro
I knew it was Hoffman. There was one trick I remember from the book...

Guy one eats at a diner counter, a full meal. Twenty minutes into the meal guy two comes in and sits next to him but orders only coffee. They play it like total strangers. They both ask for the bill. Guy one takes the coffee bill up to the cashier and pays it. He leaves and drives (walks) off.

Guy two gets a refill and lingers five minutes. Then he looks at the bill for the full meal and complains. He pays for the coffee, smiles and leaves. Guy one and two hook up down the road and do it again.

39 posted on 08/16/2007 6:37:20 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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To: Snoopers-868th
I never heard about Woodstock until it was a documentary on T.V. and I was not sheltered.

Neither did I. Even though I'm classified a boomer, the Hippie movement was before my time. I did my share of partying, but I thought the Hippies were weird people.

40 posted on 08/16/2007 6:37:44 PM PDT by FlyVet
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