Baby Boomers

Righty: I'm a Baby Boomer myself, but I blame my generation for virtually all the cultural evils that have spread like some insidious virus throughout the Western world since the 1960s: drugs, permissiveness, crackpot "liberation" movements, chronic self-absorption, political correctness and some of the ugliest music in history. We're still paying for those excesses today. What happened to all those wild, long-haired, pot-smoking rebels who came of age in the late sixties? They're either acquiring million-dollar vacation homes or buying their wheat-free organic granola at the local food co-op. Rich or poor, the common thread here seems to be pathological self-indulgence. Most Boomers can't see beyond their own navels. We have yet to produce a single writer, artist, composer or statesman of genuine greatness. Even our generation's culture heroes (think of Dylan, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Jane Fonda, Woody Allen) are pre-Boomers to a man (or woman). Well, at least we can claim George W. Bush as one of our own.

Lefty: Maybe we Boomers haven't produced many cultural giants of our own, but we've produced an incomparably more just and progressive culture than the one we inherited from our parents. Look at the strides we've made in improving life for women, gays and people of color. Look at the extended lifespans, the loss of rigid class divisions, the world-changing brilliance of our technology. (You wouldn't be posting your opinions here, Righty, if you hadn't been standing on the sturdy shoulders of farsighted Boomers.) I guess the common thread here is an all-encompassing sense of community; instead of the individual genius, we've produced a democratic culture that cherishes contributions from ordinary people like you and me. Can't you take generational pride in an achievement like that? Oh, and don't forget that the Clintons are Boomers, too.

The New Moderate:

Let me confess that I never took to the streets with the scruffy collegiate revolutionaries of my generation. My parents had decent values and generally lived up to them; I didn't feel the need to act out my adolescent angst in the form of political rallies, psychotropic drugs or excessive cranial foliage.

Years later, I used to lament my abstention from the woolly excesses of sixties culture. Why couldn't I have lived in a commune or at least enjoyed a few wild weeks of free hippie love? Why did I hold fast to buttoned-down bourgeois values, when everyone around me was letting it all hang out? But now I think I was wiser than I thought, if that makes any sense.

What I loathed about the Boomer counterculture was its inordinate love of bad-boy, in-your-face, confrontational behavior coupled with belligerent left-wing fanaticism. Granted, the revolutionaries never succeeded in storming the barricades; they simply hunkered down on campus, where they now enjoy life as comfortably tenured radicals who reject all ideas that grate against their ideological agendas. And of course, our culture is still hopelessly smitten with bad boys (even when those bad boys happen to be girls).

What began as a healthy skepticism toward corrupt authority degenerated into a generalized contempt for all authority: religious, political, social, moral, cultural, parental. We toppled ancient idols and gloated over the wreckage. We still dwell amid those ruins today, but we haven't erected anything more impressive in their place.

What I liked about the Boomer counterculture -- its playful spirit, its freaky humor and expressiveness, its love of adventures both physical and intellectual -- seems to have died a slow death as the working world purged us of our romantic inclinations. Most of us seem to have sold out without the least whimper of regret; we became militant moneymakers. And so our Boomer playfulness eventually found expression in more mundane outlets: the cultivation of rarefied restaurant cuisine, a quirky preoccupation with lifestyle (there were no "style" sections in our newspapers before 1970), an obstinate refusal to age on schedule, and of course, a never-ending preoccupation with our own feelings. No other generation ever took to therapy with such enthusiasm, or needed to.

Why, then, has so much of Boomer culture tended toward anti-playfulness? Consider the Boomers' transformation of parenting into a joyless science, the rampant careerism, the intrusion of work into personal time, the rejection of goofy fun and games in favor of dinner-party correctness, the unhealthy obsession with health and fitness. It all confirms my suspicion of a strong fanatical streak in the Boomer psyche.

In the end, after the last Boomers have turned to sawdust, how will history look upon us? I suspect we'll be known as the Peter Pan generation. We attacked life with all the gusto and petulance of children, we believed the world revolved around us, and we despised old age. (The Baby Boomers will probably gain distinction as the first generation in history to advance from adolescence to old age without an intervening interval of maturity.) If we never achieved greatness, or even goodness, at least it can be said that we expanded our horizons beyond our parents' humble meatloaf and mashed potatoes. That appears to be our legacy, for better or worse, and it looks as if we'll have to be satisfied with it.

Summary: With their self-absorbed view of life, the Baby Boomers have done ample good and probably more harm. In the end, they renounced greatness for the comforts of their self-made lifestyles.

George W. Bush

Righty: Thank God this courageous man was chosen to lead our country during its most unsettling crisis since the Civil War. Bush had the guts to challenge Islamic terrorists and hunt them down where they live. (Can you imagine if Gore had been president on 9/11? He’d probably have scolded the terrorists for releasing pollutants into the atmosphere over lower Manhattan!) Unlike most politicians, who flip-flop at the merest squeak from their latest focus group, Bush has sacrificed his poll ratings to make unpopular decisions in the name of American security. Think about it: while half the Muslim world has been plotting to attack the U.S., we’ve gone six years without a single terrorist incident on American soil. Give the man a break. Years from now we’ll be honoring Bush for turning the tide against terror. I just hope he lives long enough to see it happen.

Lefty: From his mangled syntax to his catastrophic war in Iraq, Bush has sealed his reputation as incomparably the worst president in American history. Nixon may have been just as villainous, but at least he was a competent villain. Bush is so willfully ignorant, so aggressively stupid that he makes Warren G. Harding look like a genius. (If I couldn’t laugh at Bush I’d pop an artery.) With his insane crusade against Saddam Hussein, his establishment of evil American gulags, and his Orwellian penchant for wreaking havoc in the name of "freedom," he squandered all the international goodwill we enjoyed as a nation after 9/11. Bush is a fundamentalist Christian fanatic who claims to receive his foreign policy advice from God. What more evidence do we need that the man is unfit to be president of a small-town travel agency, let alone a world power? We have our own Supreme Court justices (bless ‘em) to thank for electing him in 2000. What rankles me even more is the willingness of the American people to submit to Bush and his reign of terror. We should have impeached him long ago for lying to us about Iraq; by now we should have been charging the barricades to bring him down.

The New Moderate:

I remember a moment, shortly after 9/11, when it looked as if our unprepossessing Prince Hal was about to transform himself into Shakespeare’s heroic Henry V. As he stood atop the ruins of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in hand, and shouted for retribution, George W. Bush seemed to embody the strength and eloquence of a natural leader who had just discovered his powers. Here he was, tossing aside scripts, prudence and namby-pamby diplomacy for an honest, from-the-gut response to an international outrage. Unfortunately, that was the high-water mark of his presidency.

Nearly everything since has been a disaster. The natural leader with the middling mind and fiercely patriotic heart made the fatal error of letting his sinister entourage think for him. (Not that his own thinking would have been much of an improvement.) Bush should have dispatched his advisors at the first mention of "hidden WMD" in Iraq. But he was too ignorant and too unsure of himself to prevail over them. Since then, with his policies come to ruin, he has bravely stood his ground -- like a deer staring into the headlights of an onrushing car.

Meanwhile, the reputation of the United States lies in tatters. Our misguided war in Iraq has plunged us into a futile struggle that could last for decades and bring our overextended empire to ruin. A couple of black-market atomic weapons smuggled past U.S. border security would drive home the message in a hurry.

Hard as it may be to believe, Bush’s domestic record rivals his foreign policy for disastrous implications. His pigheaded stance on the environment is enough to cause mass apoplexy among people who care about this planet. His carefree spending has dug a deep budgetary hole that will take decades to remedy. He’s been too lax on illegal immigration and too eager to curtail civil liberties. His no-child-left-behind education policy has turned our public schools into test-prep centers when we desperately need them to educate.

Worse yet (at least from The New Moderate's centro-centric perspective), Bush has polarized the American people like no other president in memory. Under his watch, the republic has essentially split, like some great amoeba, into two separate and mutually hostile cultures: the red and the blue, godfearing Middle American conservatives versus "progressive" coastal liberals. As usual, thinking moderates are caught in no-man's land. At least we can thank Bush for making our moderate movement necessary.

I don’t believe the man is evil; I don’t even believe he’s stupid. Shallow, yes. Impulsive, check. Insulated and uninformed, certainly. Beholden to ruling-class interests, mais oui! But more to the point, Bush II is simply beyond his depth in the presidency.

In peaceful times he might have succeeded; the odd combination of his affable down-home personality (grammar snobs be damned) and upper-establishment connections would have served him well. Despite the Katrina relief disaster that was flogged to death in the major media, Bush seems to have genuine respect for minorities. He doesn’t weigh the political advantages of his policies, much to his credit. (He’s the opposite of Bill and Hillary in this department.) But Bush will never escape the opprobrium of having led us into a disastrous and totally unnecessary war. That’s his legacy, and unfortunately all of us will have to live with it.

Summary: George W. Bush isn’t exactly evil; he’s more like your average ruling-class mediocrity who bit off more than he could chew. The downside is that all of us Americans will be paying for his mistakes for decades to come.

Capitalism

Righty: Any system that rewards individual initiative, inventiveness, character, hard work and dedication is the kind of system we need to bring out the best in our people. Capitalism is like a magical machine that takes raw materials and transforms them into wealth. Into the machine we load oil, iron ore, cotton, lumber and ideas; out the other end emerge handsome homes, stores, cities, universities and a life of comfort. Capitalism is the essence of freedom and the springboard to self-fulfillment. No system has been more effective at transforming us from wretched barbarians into affluent and civilized men and women. If God had money, you can bet He’d be a capitalist, too.

Lefty: Righty offers us a predictably starry-eyed (read "deluded") view of a corrupt economic system that thrives on greed, opportunism and exploitation. The essence of capitalism is a cheat: you obtain your goods at a bargain price and fob them off on your gullible customers at a significantly fatter price. Very noble, that. Even worse, the capitalist reaps a profit off the labor of his underpaid underlings. They sweat for a pittance, like beasts of burden, stripped of their dignity and security; the capitalist collects the rewards. Where’s the justice in that? The people who do the work are entitled to share equally in the proceeds, and only government ownership of the means of production will restore some semblance of justice to this outrageously exploitative system. We need an economy that acknowledges our interdependence and sense of community. Marx had it right: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need."

The New Moderate:

As Winston Churchill once observed about democracy, capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others. There is nothing especially praiseworthy about buying low and selling high, other than the fact that it helps build fortunes for those doing the buying and selling.

Capitalism rewards an extremely narrow range of human skills: the ability to spot opportunities and exploit them. Nothing especially praiseworthy about that, either. What if our skills lie more in the direction of creating vivid art, diagramming sentences or amassing a vast internal storehouse of general knowledge? Then we’re free to join the underclass. There’s your "freedom" for you, Righty.

I like capitalism’s respect for individual effort; I’m all in favor of private property; I think hard work should be rewarded. It’s just that within the confines of pure free-market capitalism, the rewards generally go to the most avaricious rather than the brightest or most virtuous. Much like Darwinian natural selection, pure capitalism is an amoral system that shows no regard for beauty, kindness or other intrinsic values; all that seems to matter is one's ability to find a suitable niche and dominate it. (For this reason rats and MBAs are more successful than tigers and poets.)

We need to reshape capitalism so that robber-baron CEOs can no longer earn a thousand times the salaries of their hardworking secretaries. We need to restore some sense of proportion to our current "winner-take-all" economy, or eventually the peasants will revolt. What’s more, I think they’ll be justified.

The New Moderate would favor a modified capitalist economy as defined by the two Roosevelts: combine TR’s trustbusting fervor with FDR’s reliance on inspired federal programs to supplement the private sector, and we’d be well on our way to a more just economy that, unlike socialism or communism, still respects and rewards the individual.

Summary: Capitalism may be the least evil of economic systems, but it’s far from perfect. We need to tweak it so more people can share in the rewards.

Birth Control

Righty: The Good Lord counseled us to "be fruitful and multiply," and His wisdom is good enough for me. Birth control is an unnatural disruption of the human life cycle. Even worse, I think it's a symptom of cultural narcissism: snooty urban yuppies don't want anything as depressingly mundane as babies to keep them from dining out at their fancy restaurants. Look at what's happening in Western Europe, where the native populations are surrendering their future to the hordes of Muslims who reproduce like fruitflies in their midst. And why? Because Europeans are so enamored of their cushy lifestyles that they've balked at the strenuous task of raising offspring. Listen up, America! I see the same pattern emerging here, among our own middle class. Get busy and start reproducing -- unless, of course, you're comfortable with the idea of living in the Estados Unidos thirty years from now. But what do you care? Your children won't have to live there -- because YOU WON'T HAVE ANY!

Lefty: Whoa there, Righty! Your racism is exceeded only by your chronic ignorance. Having children should be a matter of personal choice, and optional birth control is the most effective means to that end. Furthermore, your stance on birth control (and the Catholic Church's, for that matter) should win some kind of award for environmental irresponsibility. How can you continue to fight birth control when this overcrowded planet will be running out of resources before the end of this century? Forget about white Americans and Europeans versus Muslims and Hispanics. The issue is whether our primitive biological need to create more and more people in our image is going to lead us to a nightmare scenario of famines, global deforestation and mass extinctions. And who's going to suffer most? Precisely the people you fear and despise, Righty: Hispanics, Muslims and other Third-World peoples whose expanding populations will soon overwhelm the earth's ability to support them. The Church, especially, deserves to be excommunicated from the human community for its willfully reactionary, disastrous and ultimately evil (yes, evil!) prohibition of simple birth control methods that could save our planet from ruin.

The New Moderate:

Such intense heat emanating from the right and left can mean only one thing: the answer lies in the middle. The New Moderate believes, with Lefty, that the Church has no divine right to prohibit a practice that was never mentioned, let alone condemned, in the Bible. (And don't quote us the story about Onan and his seed; if you're going to adhere to the literal dictates of every Bible verse, you're also required to stone the nearest adulterer and renounce pork forever.) The Church must wake up and see that unlimited human reproduction is going to severely compromise the quality of life on this smallish planet of ours.

That said, we also share Righty's concern that the middle classes of Europe and America are going to contracept themselves into extinction if they don't show a little more enthusiasm for procreating. Having a kid is the ultimate life-affirming gesture. The creation and nurturing of a unique little person is one of life's most richly rewarding pursuits, even if it tends to crowd out the occasional restaurant meal or midnight movie.

The moderate solution, simply stated: poor people around the world need to start using birth control; middle-class people need to use it a little less. Of course our solution sounds racist, classist and all that (go ahead, Lefty; heap your infamy upon us!). But we're merely attempting to create some needed balance: a little more restraint from those who are currently overpopulating their lands to their own detriment, and a little more lusty abandon on the part of the fading bourgeoisie, whose continued presence is vital to the survival of Western civilization (or what's left of it).

Summary: Poor people need to practice birth control more; middle class people need to practice it less.

Patriotism

Righty: I love my country above all others. There, I said it. Anyone have a problem with that? America is the greatest nation in the history of the world: the most welcoming, the freest, the most bountiful, and the most selfless in terms of rescuing other nations from disaster. We’re a land ripe with opportunities to build a rewarding life. I’m forever indebted to my country, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by in silence while she’s attacked by fanatics or badmouthed by ungrateful liberals. My country right or wrong -- but nearly always right.

Lefty: Patriotism, as Samuel Johnson once noted (and Dr. Johnson wasn’t exactly a flaming liberal), is "the last refuge of a scoundrel." It makes us narrow and parochial, as if our own country just happened to be located at the center of the known universe. It inflames us with irrational passions and provokes bloody wars at the drop of a hat. In fact, it has probably accounted for more premature deaths throughout history than all the plagues that have ravaged humankind. I suspect that patriotism is nothing more than a primitive territorial instinct inherited from our ape ancestors -- a form of patriarchal bullying perpetuated by the male of the species for countless millennia. It’s time we rose above the apes. Let’s face it: nations are an artificial and outmoded construct. We should all consider ourselves part of the human community.

The New Moderate:

We need to make a distinction between militant jingoism and the kind of patriotism that arises from a deep and abiding love for one’s country and its traditions. Simply stated, The New Moderate rejects the former and embraces the latter.

Jingoism is the misguided notion that our own country is better than all the rest (and therefore deserves to get whatever it wants, peacefully or otherwise). Genuine patriotism is absolute, not comparative; I can love the United States without feeling the slightest need to denigrate (or invade) France, Germany, China or Turkmenistan. Patriotism is what kept George Washington from abandoning the American cause while his army nearly disintegrated at Valley Forge. Patriotism is what inspired Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King to find words that inspired the rest of us. Patriotism is fitting and proper.

Jingoism, on the other hand, is the patriotism of a fanatic. Not satisfied with loving his native land, the jingoist agitates for his country to meddle gratuitously in foreign affairs, assert itself over other nations, establish an empire of unilateral dominance. Jingoism is the asinine chant of "We’re number one!" echoing around the globe.

The New Moderate would like to see a return to simple, wholesome, heartfelt patriotism. We shouldn’t expend our energies bashing our country (our politicians, yes; our country, no) any more than we should incite our country to embark on unprincipled global adventures. As with most issues (but especially this one), the answer lies in the middle.

Summary: Genuine patriotism is a noble sentiment: a heartfelt love of one’s country. It shouldn’t be allowed to deteriorate into cheap jingoism, which subordinates all other nations to one’s own.

Illegal Immigrants in the U.S.

Righty: Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want to see America overrun with hordes of unskilled immigrants who conveniently refuse to learn English. I’m not exactly keen on seeing them move into my neck of the woods and turning our downtown into a teeming barrio. But I’m realistic enough to recognize that the American economy needs all the able-bodied help it can get. Let’s be honest: we need uneducated, low-paid workers -- and plenty of them -- who are willing to perform the grunt-work that we overpampered Americans have grown too proud and soft to do for ourselves. Who else is going to pick our crops, stock Wal-Mart’s shelves, weed our lawns and scrub our toilets? First we need to make sure that all those illegals have a fair chance to become legal. Then we need to enact immigration laws that encourage hardworking people to enter this country and keep our economy booming.

Lefty: I’m loath to admit I agree with you on this one, Righty, but I do -- for completely different reasons, naturally. America is a nation of immigrants, and we should stay true to our historic role as a welcoming beacon of opportunity and freedom from oppression. The inscription on our Statue of Liberty reads, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." How can we turn our backs on those huddled masses? We need to ensure that everyone who wants to start a new life in America has a right to live here. Anything else would amount to a betrayal of our national purpose. By what moral authority do we determine that some immigrants are "legal" (i.e., desirable) and others are "illegal" (i.e., undesirable)? It wouldn’t have anything to do with the color of their skin, would it?

The New Moderate:

I might be a little obtuse, but how is it that our friends on the right and left conveniently overlook the word "illegal" attached to the aforementioned immigrants? Illegal immigrants are, by definition, lawbreakers. They’ve entered the U.S. on the sly, find work on the sly, elude Uncle Sam at tax time but readily accept his generosity when they need a benefit or two. And their numbers just keep growing like some radioactive behemoth from a 1950s sci-fi flick.

That the illegals are predominantly Hispanic is almost irrelevant. The only Latino-specific issue that should concern us is the apparent reluctance of many Hispanic immigrants to learn English -- along with our own feeble-minded attempts to support their Anglophobia by establishing Spanish as our unofficial second language. (See BILINGUALISM.) The New Moderate would be equally peeved if the illegals were Swedes or Hungarians who stole past the border guards and settled en masse in cities and towns across the republic, enjoying government benefits and straining our resources without contributing to the public till.

The recently proposed solutions to illegal immigration should strike any thinking moderate as outrageous and even nonsensical. Building a wall along sections of the Mexican border is a wasteful and ultimately absurd enterprise. Not only does it send a spiteful message to everyone south of the border, but it can only tempt the more resourceful outlaws to perform end-runs around our defenses.

The newly minted Bush-Kennedy gradual amnesty bill (when these two gentlemen collaborate, be very afraid!) must rank among the most shameless examples of governmental hornswoggling in American history. Formulated behind closed doors, the program essentially winks at the past transgressions of the illegals if they take a few cursory steps to legalize themselves over the next few years. (We have stiffer penalties for parking-ticket scofflaws.) The bill disguises itself as a moderate solution, yet it blatantly caters to special interests on the right and left. It serves Republicans who salivate over the prospect of low-wage workers flooding the land; it serves Democrats who covet the affections of all those brand-new Democratic voters; it totally ignores the will of the people. Our partisans ignore the will of the people at their own peril; Americans will ultimately rebel against a government that repeatedly snubs them. (Mr. Jefferson gave us permission, after all.)

So what do we propose as a moderate solution to the illegal immigration fiasco? It’s relatively simple: enforce the law. Nothing extreme about that. Impose penalties on illegal immigrants and those who shelter them. Deport all illegals with criminal records. Set term limits on "guest" workers the way we do for houseguests and congressmen. Make life considerably less inviting here for immigrants who sneak past the border guards.

Some would argue that we should sympathize with the plight of any people who want to make a better life for themselves in the U.S. We agree. Let them enter the country through legal channels, pick up a Social Security card, work and pay taxes like the rest of us. Then you can talk to us about sympathy.

Summary: Illegal immigrants flood the job market, depress wages, pay no taxes and consume a disproportionate share of benefits. They’re harming our country, a fact our lawmakers conveniently ignore. Just as important, they’re lawbreakers and should be treated as such. The solution: simply enforce the law.

Moderates

Righty: I've reached the conclusion that a moderate is just a liberal without a backbone. Of course, we never know what moderates really believe because they're too jelly-legged to stand up and say anything worth remembering. At least Lefty knows the issues and can pack a good wallop. I suspect that the average moderate is just a namby-pamby quiche-eating yuppie who never thinks about anything more important than the newest trendy restaurant to open up in his neighborhood. You know why there are no political magazines for moderates? Because moderates don't care about anything. Most of them probably don't even know that they're moderates -- that's how pathetically apathetic they are.

Lefty: The world must be coming to an end, Righty: I actually agree with you on this one! I might detest your views, but I admire your willingness to take a stand and debate it. Moderates? They're bland, unenlightened political nonentities who are chronically oblivious to the world's problems. Someone needs to wake them up with a good spray from the garden hose of reality.

The New Moderate:

I have to concede that Righty and Lefty make some painfully valid points. We moderates do need to wake up -- fast. We need to rouse ourselves from indifference, come together and develop a coherent platform that can propel our ideas into the limelight. I'm tired of occupying a vacuum between the push and pull of extremist ideologies. I'm tired of getting no respect from the right or the left. If you're a moderate, you should be tired of it, too.

Moderate ideas are the most lucid, the fairest, the most practical, the most sensitively reasoned, and the most representative of society as a whole. (That's why I consider myself a moderate, and why I believe so fervently in our cause.) So why are we moderates, to this day, a vast and voiceless nothing between the two constantly flapping wings that dominate the public debate?

The majority of Americans characterize themselves as moderates. But where's the passion, the camaraderie, the inspired rhetoric? Where's the traffic on this site? Is anybody home?

Being a moderate means more than adding up the ideas of the right and left, and taking the average. It means being brave enough to stand up and shrug off the crossfire from the opposing trenches. It means being reckless and resolute enough to declare that, for example, the pro-life and pro-choice factions are both equally rigid and equally wrong... that the abortion issue will never be resolved until more nuanced and moderate minds prevail.

American culture has been dominated by dueling extremists since the McCarthy era, and the strife has grown nastier than ever under the polarizing reign of Bush II. The U.S. has essentially split into two nations, red and blue, implacable and apparently irreconcilable. Why do we stand around and twiddle our thumbs? Thinking moderates everywhere owe it to themselves and their country to wake up and forge a radical middle that can influence public debate, win votes and stitch a sundered nation into the strong and happy union it was always meant to be.

Summary: Moderates have the best and fairest ideas, but nobody will know it until we form a movement to thrust those ideas into the public consciousness. Let the movement begin NOW.