Talkin' bout my generation

A new book argues that the baby boomers were a "greater generation" than the one that beat the Depression and Hitler. But what did we really do?

By Gary Kamiya

Read more: Books, Culture, Gary Kamiya, '60s, Reviews, Book reviews

Feb. 3, 2006 | Complaints that the current generation is inferior to the preceding one are probably as old as human history. The ancient Greeks were given to lamenting the loss of their fathers' manly virtues; the Romans were forever looking back to a Golden Age of heroic simplicity; the Renaissance was driven by a desire to recapture the lost greatness of the ancient world. If Cro-Magnon man was able to write, he would no doubt have lamented the passing of the noble Neanderthals.

So it is hardly surprising that the baby boomers, that vast cohort of Americans born between 1945 and the early 1960s, have been compared unfavorably -- often by themselves -- to their parents' generation. In this view, the "Greatest Generation" -- the term coined by Tom Brokaw, who in his bestselling book modestly maintained that it was the greatest generation any society has ever produced -- was a race of heroes, humble in demeanor but towering in achievement, who rebuilt America after the Depression and defeated the Axis in World War II. They then returned home and made a whole bunch of babies, pampered kids who got stoned in the '60s and '70s, went into mutual funds in the '80s, bought sub-zero refrigerators in the '90s, and are now preparing to irritate not just their children but their grandchildren with their endless boasting about how hip they were. The Greatest Generation vs. the Me Generation. D-Day bodies vs. decaf lattes. No contest.

Leonard Steinhorn's "The Greater Generation" sets out to turn this picture on its head. For Steinhorn, the "Greatest Generation" did its duty honorably in defeating Hitler, but melted under fire when it returned home and faced racism, sexism, homophobia, intolerant moralism, and general Organization Man uptightness. It was the baby boomers who won these wars. And Steinhorn maintains that their achievement is all the greater because unlike World War II, they were not ones they had to fight. "Greatness can be measured not only by the decisions we must make, but by the decisions we choose to make," Steinhorn writes. "Two generations stared at the same shortcomings, inequities and hypocrisies of American life, but it was the Baby Boom generation that chose to tackle them, to hold this country to its grand ideals, to agitate for justice when it would have been easier to remain docile and silent, and we are a better nation because of that. It is why this generation's accomplishments eclipse what came before it, and why the Baby Boom must be recognized as the Greater Generation."

According to Steinhorn, a professor of communication at American University and a former political speechwriter, the boomers have failed to get credit in part because of our belief that only epic deeds count. "One of our prevailing cultural assumptions today, fueled by the media's insatiable need for narrative arcs, is that the only path to greatness is through sacrifice and suffering ... But what gets left out of this narrative is the heroism of daily life, of changing institutions and compelling society to live up to its ideals. What gets left out is the idealistic legwork of democracy."

Steinhorn advances a double argument, demythologizing the Greatest Generation while praising the deeds of the boomers. In his view, the heroes of Tarawa and Bastogne dropped the ball when the war ended. "When they returned home after the war and it came time to defend the freedoms they defended overseas, the Greatest Generation turned out to be generally resistant or mute." Indeed, Steinhorn argues that when it came to societal values, the Greatest Generation had feet of clay -- and their lower extremities remained suitable for pottery well into old age. "If most Greatest Generation Americans had their way, Baby Boomers would have transformed precious little in American life  Well into the 1990s, polls showed Greatest Generation majorities opposing interracial marriage, objecting to working mothers, supporting discrimination against gays, clinging to the notion that husbands belong at work and wives belong at home, and insisting on the old rule that young people should be taught to follow their elders, not think for themselves."

By contrast, Steinhorn writes, boomers were passionate idealists who demanded that America live up to its ideals. Disillusioned by official lies about Vietnam, appalled by America's pervasive racism, rejecting double standards for and discrimination against women, unwilling to blindly accept authority, the boomers fought for a more tolerant, enlightened, transparent and just society. Rather than being moral relativists or anything-goes nihilists, Steinhorn argues, they in fact embodied a deeply ethical and committed vision. "Given the Baby Boom's staunch values, their devotion to egalitarian and inclusive principles, how curious that some critics accuse Boomers of lacking a moral compass and imposing a reckless relativism on the rest of society," he writes. "Conservative critics such as William Bennett, George Will, Sean Hannity and Robert Bork condemn Boomer liberalism for 'unilateral moral disarmament,' to quote Bennett, for an unwillingness to 'make judgments on a whole range of behaviors and attitudes.' But this analysis is flawed and misguided -- it simply misreads Baby Boom culture." In the end, says Steinhorn, what "perturbs these critics is that their version of morality has been superseded by Baby Boom morality, and in a sly effort to undermine Boomer liberalism, they attempt to trivialize it."

Steinhorn likens right-wing critics of the boomers and their liberal ethos to Luddites -- they are a doomed band of reactionaries, shrilly inveighing against a society and a new system of values that have left them behind. The conservative rump appears disproportionately influential simply because they make more noise, and the media loves controversy. Today's boomers are quiet because they have won: While in the '60s they vigorously protested injustice, "there's less to incite Boomer outrage as the country marches haltingly and imperfectly but relentlessly toward Baby Boom norms. It's the angry cultural Luddites who command the media platform today."

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