Baby Boom Challenge

As we move into a new year, many of us are focused on the need to jump start our moribund economy. It certainly will be Job #1 for our new president. At the same time, however, America faces a different and more daunting challenge. It's one that will take a supreme effort on the part of those that recognize it.

It can't be met with rhetoric from myriad of divides that haunt our society: Black vs. white, liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, gay, vs. straight. If left unmet, this challenge threatens to gut any economic recovery that takes place in the future.

Think for a moment about some of the more outlandish stories that dotted the American landscape in 2008. From Eliot Spitzer to Rod Blagojevich, from Plaxico Burress to Bernie Madoff, from Kwame Kilpatrick to Ted Stevens to John Edwards to AIG to the Big Three carmakers, a common thread emerges. It's one of greed, entitlement, stupidity, and cluelessness. And even these stories scratch the surface of what the nation must address, and fix. It can't be fixed simply by electing the nation's first black president and looking to him to wave a magic wand.

Fact is, America's soul is damaged, and too many of us either refuse to admit it or don't recognize what has happened.

This blog is certainly not the first place to speak to this malaise. My man Steven Ivory has written eloquently in eurweb.com about the need to mend our damaged fabric. The purpose here is to build on what others have recognized, and throw down a gauntlet to a specific group to take the lead in addressing the problem.

What needs fixing in this country is our moral compass, our sense of ourselves, and our resolve to leave a better world for our children than what we inherited. And what group needs to take the lead in remolding the American spirit? It is the responsibility of my generation, the so-called baby boomers.



As our eldest creep toward retirement, an honest assessment of our stewardship of the nation would leave quite a bit to be desired.

It is that generation of men and women born between 1946 and 1964 that benefitted from an enormous expansion of the US economy, and at the same time changes in the nation's moral fiber brought on in large measure by the civil rights movement.



It was also our generation that saw the need 40 years ago to change America's direction. We were young then, and the ethos of the counterculture was at the same time well intentioned and unfocused. It is now almost two generations later. Many of us have grown children and grandchildren. It's time for us to dig deep, and start asking questions that may be painful, but are certainly necessary.

We can start by asking ourselves whether what we say we want in the life of this country is actually what we end up paying for. Put simply, many of us decry the cultural excesses that we ourselves consume.

Whether it's the endless diet of "reality television" we watch, or the banal, self aggrandizing music we listen to, we need to ask ourselves whether this is the best we can do. This isn't about censorship but about discriminating consumption.

Most of us don't realize that as we encourage the production of shows like "The Real Housewives of Whatever" we know less and less about the rest of the world because our media has closed foreign news bureaus because they aren't profit centers.

Whether we want to admit it or not, our consumption speaks to our values, to what we hold dear, to what is important to us. If spending $100,000 on a sweet sixteen birthday party appears normal to our youth, will spending time with family and friends ever suffice? If over the top behavior is rewarded with media exposure, how do we reward what is normal, caring, and nurturing?

If a half-hearted effort gets you a passing grade in school, why bother striving for excellence? I believe if these fundamental issues aren't addressed, we can expect more, not less of the behavior we say we abhor.

And why, you may ask, does the baby boom generation have a special responsibility to join the struggle for the nation's future?



It's not simply that which we were given, although that would be reason enough. It is our numbers that mandate the work we must do. Those numbers represented the hope of our parents for the future we'd inherit.

That we've been imperfect vessels is inarguable. Yet if our time as young people taught us anything, it should have been the notion that yes, we can change the nation, and the world.

Baby boomers and children of baby boomers, your comments please?