To the extent that one can have an opinion on a generation, I have always felt negative about the baby boomers in a way that I simply don’t feel about any other generation. And it’s not due to my feelings about my parents either. I always thought their “never trust anyone over 30” slogan was remarkably stupid; even as a child it was clear to me that it is a philosophy with a time limit. In his article, The Technicality Generation, Larry Pressler offers an explanation for why doubts about the baby boomers, particularly the elite ones, tend to be well justified:
THE problems faced by Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general, over his depiction of his military service are indicative of a broader disease in our society. The issues of integrity in business and politics that plague us today — the way elites are no longer trusted — are rooted in the dishonesty that surrounded the Vietnam-era draft….
In private conversations with my classmates, I was told over and over that they didn’t want to serve in the military because it would hold up their careers. To the outside world, though, many would proclaim they weren’t going because they were opposed to the war and we should end all wars. Eventually they began to believe their “idealism” was superior to that of those who did serve. They said that it was courageous to resist the draft — something that would have been true if they had actually become conscientious objectors and gone to prison.
Too many in my generation did a deeply insidious thing. And they got away with it. Big time. Poorer people went to war. The men who didn’t were able to get their head start to power.
Now that flawed thinking has been carried forward.
Despite being raised to revere the Marine Corps and being an lifelong student of military history, I don’t fault those who were genuine conscientious objectors. They were right to resist the draft, right to refuse to serve in an illegitimate and undeclared war, and their willingness to go to jail rather than play the technicality game or serve as an armed slave of the state was more heroic than anything the civil rights leaders ever did in their manifest self-interest.
And yes, conservatives, the Vietnam War was not only unjust, it didn’t even rise to the level of an actual war. You will have to show me the declaration of war if you want to even try to defend it.