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The Baby-Boomer Gap
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The Baby-Boomer Gap
Copyright © November 14, 2016 Douglas W. Jerving.
All Rights Reserved.
I don't know the data regarding the observations I am about to make. There may
be some demographic studies available to support or toss off my thinking on this
subject, but I’m not going to waste my time digging around for them. I suspect the
history I am about to present already amplifies my observations, so that the addition
of statistical data is merely redundant. I also suspect that the clear majority of
everyday Americans already understand that what I am saying rings true.
As a kid growing up in the 'sixties and early 'seventies I remember constantly hearing
about a so-called generation gap. The pundits of that time were reiterating the
university tenured sociologists and political scientists who decried a fundamental
divide between the “younger generation” and the ideals of their parents’ generation.
Strangely, they ignored the fact that a substantial portion of that younger generation
gladly went off to Vietnam to fight the global threat of communism. They also
conveniently backwatered the large minority of conservative Goldwater Republicans,
many of whom were young people.
The children viewed at that time as the “generation gap” have now been re-labelled
the baby boomers. I suspect this is a convenient way to disassociate present day
liberalism from its failure to correctly interpret the history of the ‘sixties and
‘seventies.
Anyway, it appears to me that the earlier a person was born in the baby boomer
generation, the further they lean toward the socialist progressivism of today’s
Democrat party, and the political naivete of today’s Millennials. The later they were
born into that era the stronger they lean toward conservatism and the Republican party,
(including many of the better informed Millennials).
The baby boomer period is officially recognized as the years 1946 – 1964. Dwight D.
Eisenhower was president from January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961. John F. Kennedy’s
administration followed him, and with him, the cataclysmic sixties.
By the time Kennedy came into office, the first baby boomers were just turning fifteen
or sixteen. For most kids of the fifties, the age of sixteen was almost an unofficial
quinceañera. It meant they were finally moving into adulthood; into a time when they
could afford to have opinions about the world that were different than those of their
parents. By 1966 the kids who were born in the first half of the baby boomer generation
were from nine to twenty years old.
Children born into the second half of the baby boomer era (1955 – 1964) were in their
middle – teens between 1970 and 1979. (For instance, I was born in late 1957 and turned
fifteen in 1972, just in time for Nixon and Watergate.)
Almost every baby boomer from the first half of that era was born prior to, or at the
very beginning of the Eisenhower administration. Their early formative years were under
the tutelage of a generation of young adults who grew up highly informed by the World
War II period of American history.
Every baby boomer from the second half of that era was either born under the Eisenhower
regime or under that of JFK.
The mid – point of the baby boomer generation is literally the Eisenhower administration.
It was under Eisenhower that the cold – war mentality became most prominent in American
political ideology. This was also the period in which a détente of sorts was reached
between the anti-communist right wing and the American socialist and progressive movements
they were waging word wars against. Senator Joseph McCarthy, the extreme right’s figurehead,
died in 1957, effectively ending that era in American politics. The cold – war however
continued into the eighties, which was the time just after most second – half baby boomers
had reached adulthood and were voting.
Those who were born five to nine years prior to the Kennedys' and King assassinations are
more typically aligned to classical liberalism (see below), anti-socialism and anti-statism.
They were born into the Eisenhower administration, and witnessed the assassination of JFK,
and generally discount the Warren Report’s attempt to view that murder as the work of a
lone nut-job. They (myself included) view the assassinations of the sixties as
quasi – governmental conspiracies. They tend to be far less trusting of Big Government
and its' ability to offer us a better life.
(Classical liberalism is now defined as traditional conservatism, as opposed to the modern
definition of liberalism which is equivalent to socialist progressivism. It is best associated
with the conservative libertarianism of our times. Neo-conservatism is not the same thing as
conservatism or classical liberalism, in that it generally applies the modern welfare state to
national and multi-national corporate funding projects. The subject is to vast to spend time
on here.)
First – half baby boomers on the other hand were already in their teens or twenties when the
sixties were in progress. Their early formative years were instilled with the post - war
prosperity of their parents’ generation and the new mobility of the automobile that came
with that prosperity. They seriously believed that their abundance was the result of a newly
powerful national government that was beneficently controlling the economy from Washington DC
to Anytown, USA. The national government was generously steering all the States in the
direction of an unprecedented peace and prosperity. It was now time to support that regime
and bring the national vision of Democracy to the rest of the world.
The most socially engaged teenagers of the late ‘fifties and early ‘sixties became, and
remained, the socialist ideologues whose principles inform much of the Millennial generation.
Many of them went from being “‘sixties radicals” to reformers working within the apparatus of
the State. They became publicly funded professors in the Universities, operatives in
quasi-governmental organizations, community organizers, political action leaders, and
politicians for the left. What they learned from the previous generation of progressivist
activists about infiltrating government systems was applied practically, using the American
system of government against itself. Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals became the playbook
for the change-agents of the whole generation.
Teen kids in the late ‘sixties and into the ‘seventies remain the driving force of the
libertarian anti-state attitudes between those two generations. They saw the results that
the political gurus of the early ‘sixties did not anticipate, and that the kids of nineties
were too young to participate in. They experienced firsthand the effects of the perpetual
welfare society, and the growing restrictions on economic and political, religious and academic
freedoms. They saw through the ruse being perpetuated by the social justice warriors of the
left and were determined to resist it, at least on a personal level.
For example, in the mid-seventies I was involved in a group called Youth Against War and
Fascism (YAWF). My friends and I were involved with YAWF in a few protests against the war,
and we publicly mocked the Nazis who occasionally organized in downtown Milwaukee. (We
literally risked getting our asses kicked by them once! But that’s another story.)
At one point, I went over to the leader of the Milwaukee YAWF chapter's home which was a
crappy apartment on the Lower East Side. He was older than me and all my teen-age friends
by at least five years. Maybe older. He was probably born just prior to the Eisenhower
regime in the later post WWII era, just like most of the early baby boomers.
I was a later baby boomer. I was born under Eisenhower and intimately experienced the JFK
assassination. It has always been for me the most resonant point of connection to the times
I live in. No public event has shaped my life more than that assassination. There were a lot
of attitudes about the Vietnam war, American fascism, and so on that made sense to me. I
recall occasionally reading the Workers’ Daily and other labor union materials that came
monthly to a friend’s home. I had read Upton Sinclair’s socialist diatribe The Jungle, and
was impressed by it almost as much as the New Testament Gospels. To say the least, I was
impressed by the social urgency of progressivism, and almost considered myself a socialist.
While I was at the leader’s apartment one day, I asked where the bathroom was, and went to
use the facilities. He had the American flag on the wall in his bathroom. When I asked him
why he said "Because that is where it belongs! In the shitter." The American flag! He
betrayed himself to me at that point, and I think also to all my young friends. I suddenly
saw through the deception. They did not want to work within the system that gave them
freedom! They wanted to use the system that allowed them freedom to destroy it from within.
That was a turning point for me. After that I ended my associations with YAWF. Years later
I learned that YAWF was a paid front group for the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
I cannot help but think there are a lot of kids out there right now who's idealism is being
shattered in the same way mine was back then. They see the flag trampled and burned in rallies
they attend. They wonder at the animosity displayed against the very system and philosophy that
has allowed them the freedom to think what they want, or worship (or not worship) who they
want, or even think or not think at all.
Millennials are hopefully beginning to consider, like my friends and I did at that early age,
that the social fabric of American politics is still more conducive to liberty than that of
many other nations. Hopefully they will realize, like we did, that they really are living in
the freest nation on earth. If the Millennials don't get that point, then, I hate to say, our
nation is lost, and the Millennial generation will become the largest slave group of all history.
But -- I suspect they are beginning to see their way out, and realizing finally the value of
Patrick Henry's proclamation "Give me liberty or give me death". They understand that
destroying the best form of government in human history by using it against itself will only
create an open wound capable of infiltration by germs of the lowest common denominator; by
wicked men whose only goal is to set up an autocracy of their own base service.
Blowing up the system through internal or external anarchy never serves the good of the people
the radicals pretend to defend. Eventually the system may be dissolved but a harsher dictator
will execute all the radicals who helped him come to power. Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin,
Adolph Hitler, and Julius Caesar are all the proof that anarchy leads to despotism and despotism
always ends ignominiously. It never produces a better life for the people it pretends to serve,
and eventually destroys the pretender in its passion. The French Revolution eventually consumed
its own creators, and even those who thought they could use it against itself died trying.
Guy Fawkes has nothing on that!
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Doug Jerving is the publisher of the NewEdisonGazette.com. You may contact him at
dje@newedisongazette.com.
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