Our generation deserves the cesspool we allowed to be created. We stood by and watched indifferently as the magnificent beginnings of the greatest society the earth had ever witnessed deteriorated and became debased to the point that every pillar on which the concept of America rests is rotten, crumbling and corrupted.
I was in law school during the final years of the Warren Court, and seeing the growth of a humanist philosophy in government and society made me feel grateful to my parents’ generation who, after learning egalitarianism when poverty crossed traditional class lines in the Depression, and when bravery crossed traditional racial lines in World Wart II, were qualified to manage the world they still were in charge of. They elected people to office who were, with a few notable exceptions, bold and brave enough to target discrimination with powerful legislation. I am speaking of the leaders and the American citizens who were at the helm from after the Korean War until the 1970s. I will borrow the much over-used label, the “Greatest Generation” as shorthand to describe these Americans; and I will user the label the “Selfish Generation” to describe the “Boomers” who took over the helm from them.
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