{"id":7,"date":"2010-05-04T03:06:17","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T22:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2010-05-16T03:21:20","modified_gmt":"2010-05-15T22:21:20","slug":"7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/?p=7","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Generation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Worst Generation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our parents\u2019 generation received the moniker: \u201cThe Greatest Generation\u201d from former broadcaster Tom Brokow.\u00a0 Brokow\u2019s book of the same name makes a convincing case for the appellation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Born in the throes of the Great Depression, our parents matured in time to fight World War II, the Korean War, and for some even the Vietnam War.\u00a0 A generation winning wars, raising the standard of living, giving birth to, well, us, the Baby Boomers.\u00a0 We arrived on the wave of post-WWII prosperity, which washed across this great land.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We grew up while our parents\u2019 generation struggled to fight, and win, the Cold War against Communism, and the Soviet Union.\u00a0 That last struggle saw the ageless warrior, Ronald Reagan, lead one last great triumph for that generation.<\/p>\n

Having now reached middle age, of what triumphs can we boast?\u00a0 Middle East peace? Not exactly.\u00a0 Worldwide elimination of poverty?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Worldwide embracing of democracy?\u00a0 Fits and starts at best.\u00a0 Worldwide embrace of capitalism?\u00a0 Perhaps, but it came in the form of the 18th<\/sup> or 19th<\/sup> Century form, the one that smacks of corruption, exploitation, and avoidance of minimum labor and environmental laws now considered mandatory in this country as part of the definition of modern civilization.<\/p>\n

Promotion of the family?\u00a0 Hardly.\u00a0 We did manage to bring in a new worldwide plague in the form of a new venereal disease: AIDS.\u00a0\u00a0 On our watch out-of-wedlock births soared.\u00a0 In this country, minority birth out of wedlock exceeds 70% of total births.\u00a0 Caucasian out-of-wedlock births continue to trend upward, and in some Scandinavian countries total birthrates show over 75% out-of-wedlock.\u00a0 We appear well on the way to subsidizing the extinction of the nuclear family.\u00a0 Public subsidies make the government, not a spouse, the \u201cbread winner\u201d of last resort.<\/p>\n

Promotion of morality or even the rule of law?\u00a0 Just like the Roman Empire, outside our borders \u201cmight makes right.\u201d\u00a0 All too often, military force remains the weapon of choice.\u00a0 When self-proclaimed enemies declare war on us, rather than pray for them, we bomb them.\u00a0 Even more unfortunate, the bombing remains insufficiently pinpoint to completely avoid the killing of\u00a0 innocents, playing right into the hands of our enemies.<\/p>\n

Domestic tranquility?\u00a0 De Tocqueville mused that democracy will be finished when people discover that they can get what they want from their government, and send the bill to the next generation.\u00a0 In 1968, the federal budget allocated over 45% of revenues to the military.\u00a0 Today, thanks to the afore-mentioned Cold War victory, that percent stands reduced to a mere 19.1%, a peace dividend. (Source: gpoaccess.gov\/budget)<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in its place, entitlement payments (Health and Human Services) rocketed from 7.3% in 1968 to 24.5% today, and represent the largest line item in the federal budget.\u00a0 The federal debt stands at an all time high: $12 trillion and climbing.\u00a0 The federal budget for 2010 projects an annual deficit of $1.4 trillion on a total budget of $3.6 trillion.\u00a0 While we remain a wealthy nation with GDP of $12-14 trillion annually, we appear to be racing toward a sovereign debt crisis.<\/p>\n

We respond by voting ourselves a new entitlement, health care, with generous subsidies and little in the way of legitimate funding mechanisms.\u00a0 It also appears to provide little in the way of incentives for wellness or health cost containment.\u00a0 The means to obtain this entitlement involved political gimmickry, backroom deals, and circumvention of the Senate filibuster mechanism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We remain unwilling to recognize that 43% of the citizens of the nation on our southern border would prefer to live here\u2014no surprise\u2014to take advantage of our entitlement system.\u00a0 Our system invites their illegal immigration to our country by guaranteeing full benefits to all of their children simply by virtue of their birth upon arrival.\u00a0 Indeed, currently 70% of the births in Los Angeles public hospitals record the parents as illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n

Guaranteeing health care for all of these new U.S. citizens certainly will do nothing to discourage further illegal immigration.\u00a0 While these brave new immigrants, and their innocent children, bring many positive attributes to our country, the further entrenchment of an underground economy seems destined to further undermine the rule of law in this country.<\/p>\n

Will the U.S. end up being \u201cno country for old men.\u201d\u00a0 Will we go down in history as the \u201cworst generation\u201d?\u00a0 Time appears to be running short on the chance to make our legacy a positive one.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2010\u2014David J. Carr<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Worst Generation? \u00a0 Our parents\u2019 generation received the moniker: \u201cThe Greatest Generation\u201d from former broadcaster Tom Brokow.\u00a0 Brokow\u2019s book of the same name makes a convincing case for the appellation.\u00a0 Born in the throes of the Great Depression, our … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-and-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}