that link didn't work when I tried it
Ditto, I backtracked, it seems to be a server problem.
Well, it looks like Power's journey is not yet over. It seems to me that her father's prayers have worked powerfully in her life, making her uneasy with her crimes. May our Lord lead her back into the light that she left so long ago.
As for the family of the murdered officer, I will pray for them.
Rush calls baby boomers the most selfish generation.
I've got a friend who calls 'em the "Cry Baby Boomers."
This really can't be that big a surprise, eh? People across our great land are daily finding it easier to call injustice justice, and evil good.
JCL wrote: "Rush calls baby boomers the most selfish generation."
Rush must not know many Generation Xers.
You're probably right about X-ers being as selfish as boomers. The difference is that boomers are (wilfully?) blind to their own selfishness, and have presented it to the world as a higher morality.
X-ers, for the most part, see through the crap. Unfortunately, that just makes us "selfish but honest about it". I'm honestly not sure which is worse. Kind of sickening both ways.
I always feel a strange mixture of fascination, pity, sympathy, contempt and revulsion for women like Kathryn Ann Power and Cathy Boudin because they are my age-mates, my cohort, my--- admit it---sisters, and I could have gone in the same direction so easily.
Born in 1951, first civil rights march 1965, first DC anti-Vietnam march 1967, high school valedictorian in 1969 (from the finest parochial high school), went Left, wrote glorio-furious articles and made furio-glorious speeches against war, racism, and capitalism and so forth. Didn't smoke much dope, truth to tell: I was too high on self-righteousness.
Didn't go on the criminal path, though; started coming back to the Church pretty quick.
Why? Why was I such a proud political maenad? I, whose parents were so humble and good? And why was I fortunate enough to make it back alive, without any abortions, without any felonies, "fully clothed and in my right mind"?
When I can't sleep nights, I think of these things.
Kyrie eleison.
Julianne
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
People write passes to the likes of these women and the people in the Weather Underground on the basis that, while their actions--murder, terrorism--were "misguided" or "tragic," we should understand that they were driven to it by "idealism" or the injustices of their time. The same people are horrified that young fanatics fly airliners into buildings, killing thousands.
And yet they see no contradiction.
www.opinionjournal.com has an article today entitled "His Mother's Son: For Chesa Boudin murder is still "activism." There is one quote that captures, to a large extent, the sophomoric claims of moral superiority coupled with the solipsistic culture of dissent that the sixties thrust upon the world:
But his remarks unwittingly reveal the hallmark of that ethos: narcissism dressed up as compassion.
Narcissism dressed up as compassion. I'll have to remember that.
Narcissism dressed up as compassion. Our past rapist in chief in a nutshell.
What was most moving were the quotations from Sgt. Claire Schroeder the eldest daughter of the slain office Walter Schroeder. She, two of her brothers and one of her sisters all followed in their father’s footsteps and entered the police force. She rightly notes how Power and the others are lionized in the press while little mention is made of her father and the impact of his murder on her family.
She, her father and her family are the real heroes in this and should be accorded proper recognition.
People write passes to the likes of these women and the people in the Weather Underground on the basis that, while their actions--murder, terrorism--were "misguided" or "tragic," we should understand that they were driven to it by "idealism" or the injustices of their time. The same people are horrified that young fanatics fly airliners into buildings, killing thousands.
And yet they see no contradiction.
There is no contradiction for many of them, because many of them are not horrified. Many are of the it's-all-a-response-to-American-imperialism school of thought.
I argued with one unrepentent protestor against the Vietnam War, after she said that the Crusades were the start of Christian-Moslem violence. I pointed out that the Battle of Tours was before the Crusades. After some go-rounds, she called the Crusades a turning point (without admitting she had been wrong to call them the start), and said that they made things much, much worse. The Moslem conquest of Jerusalem was caused by the Crusader conquest of it.
I pointed out that was the second Moslem conquest of Jerusalem, the first one having happened before the Crusades.
She said, "Is that the best you can do?" in a post that mostly less coherent than that.
Bonhoeffer wrote of the destruction idealism wreaks on a community. He was right.
I fear for the Kathryn Power generation: they have stored up terrible judgment for themselves.
The Wall Street Journal today had a column on Boudin's snarky son, and the children of the victims. He has absorbed well the values of his mother.
Actually SEB, those same people AREN'T horrified by 19 hijackers--deep down, they realize they would like to do the same thing, because they bought into 'idealism' a long time ago, and no longer feel they have the'right to judge' anybody.
It was Link Byfield (conservative Canadian magazine editor) who pointed out to me that this self-absorbtion started not with the Boomers but with those he called the Playboy Generation--men like my late absentee father (he'd be in his early 80s now) who bought into the Hefner/Rat Pack aesthetic.
Yeah, cocktails and poker and naked ladies are all fun and games until somebody loses a dad...
Kathy,
Thanks for the info on David Warren's conversion to Catholicism. Can't wait to read his Sunday column!
Im a member of Generation X. IF youre in
your 30s rather then 40s, Mark, youre a Generation Xer. (not to say this is a great term either)
Read Bohemians in Paradise to see Baby Boomers in their true light. The 60's radicals have come of age. God help us!
Isn't that Bobos in Paradise?
Good book to read, though.
Oops yes....
Very good book to read, lots of reasons why the Democratic party is the way it is----
You're probably right about X-ers being as selfish as boomers.
I disagree actually. (And not just because I am one of this crowd.) I cannot remember defending Generation X-lax in recent memory - mainly because I have so little in common with most of them - but they do not seem on the whole to be nearly as selfish as the Boomers as a whole were/are.
I also believe that the whole that Xers are showing (and will continue to show themselves to be) a more conservative group on the whole because part of what they rebelled against was the selfishness of the Boomers.{1} This does not exonorate them by any means as compared to the silent generation (1926-1946) and the so-called "greatest generation" (1906-1926) they are not as a group of the same calibre. But they are at least better than the Boomers who are possibly the worst generation on the whole{2} that has existed for quite some time.
Im a member of Generation X. IF youre in your 30s rather then 40s, Mark, youre a Generation Xer. (not to say this is a great term either)
The first Xers will turn forty I believe in 2005. Right now they range in age between 18/19 and 38/39. (I think I am right in calibrating this in twenty year increments.)
Brief PS to Julianne: I believe children have an inherent instinct to rebel against their parents that used to be curbed somewhat by a society which at least on the exterior espoused religious principles. Yours was the first generation to lose this mooring. The problem with my generation (the X laxers) is that their opposition to the excesses of the Boomers is mostly reactive and not out of solid principle - at least not yet.
At the same time, it is too simplistic to write off the movements of the Boomers as without any merit whatsoever. Obviously there were some legitimate issues which they embraced and promoted (such as civil rights). We can (and should) recognize the wheat where we find it.
You ask "why was I fortunate enough to make it back alive, without any abortions, without any felonies, "fully clothed and in my right mind"? Perhaps the reason is because you can bear witness to what happened and thereby be credible in doing so. Those who "turned on, tuned in, and dropped out" are pretty deranged mentally in many cases. Whatever the reason was that you made it back, I am sure in time if you ponder the point enough that God will reveal it to you.
Notes:
{1} Granted in many cases this is revealing itself in popularist movements such as Libertarianism. However, at the same time the latter is seemingly an attempt to recast the principles of the Founders of this nation in a secularist sense. (Hence it is not true conservatism though it is a step in the right direction.)
{2} I emphasize "on the whole" because there are a lot of good Boomers out there. (Heck, my mother was one of the first "Boomers.") Unfortunately the chaff outweighs the wheat by quite a ways...
Most interesting was watching my own children's reactions to the Leonardo DeCaprio film "The Beach". A real cautionary tale on the end results of narcissistic idealism (Though not exactly a "great" film....).
I loathe the a icky platititudinous ($20 word, that) treatment of both Boudin and Power in the press. Not only is there misplaced idealism but such arrogant snobbery too. Their victims were hard working blue collar people, protecting our society, and they were just spoiled brats.
Oh yeah amd I will be 47, and I don't know which generation I fit into. I remember when we were about 13/14 we all felt very lame compared to our older brothers and sisters who were marching on Washinton and going to Woodstock. Then people alittle younger were into glitter rock and early Punk.....I guess I am a "boomer" but God knows I wish I wasn't!
I'm not sure about the chaff and the wheat in the Boomer generation. Note that you get talk about the young people protesting the war in Vietnam -- when in fact that age group supported the war, and by the highest percentage.
Elijah was convinced that he was alone in Israel. God informed him that there were seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
Boomers...and Greatest Gen-ers:
What parenting incompetence created the Boomers, and are their parents really all that great?
My (Totally Boomer) parents are rock-ribbed conservative evangelical red-state blue collar still married after 35 years even though it was a shotgun wedding just a few months before Dad left for VietNam and he came back w/o any psychosis (he does jump at loud noises in the dark still) and then jumped into being Daddy at 21. They made it no thanks to their f****d up families (maternal grandmother excepted, may God rest her soul) and continue to do so.
So who is to blame for the Boomers attitude? I agree that it exists, but did it spring fully formed into all their minds at once, or did their parents TEACH THEM WELL (tm)?
Speaking of Vietnam vets -- I recommend Stolen Valor by B. G. Burkett.
The short version is that many of the claims about how crazy the vets are, are pure slander.
These women made choices which have consequences. It is hypocritical to blame the "morality of the times" for their destructive actions. Most young people who lived through the 60's and 70's made did not turn to crime and violence. Thank God for that.
It seems that there is a universal streak of self-loathing running throught the American 'boomer generation.'
On the Left, it manifests itself in Anti-American sentiment and on the Right, in Anti-Boomer sentiment.
It seems to me that both the sentiment (loathing) and the object of the sentiment(my nation/generation) are pretty close to identical.
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