Posted by Rachel on: 02.11.2008 /
In this editorial published in the NY Times, conservative columnist David Brooks discusses Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama.
Kennedy went on to talk about the 1960s. But he didn’t talk much about the late ’60s, when Bill and Hillary came to political activism. He talked about the early ’60s, and the idealism of the generation that had seen World War II, the idealism of the generation that marched in jackets and ties, the idealism of a generation whose activism was relatively unmarked by drug use and self-indulgence…
And in the students’ rapture for Kennedy’s message, you began to see the folding over of generations, the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy united with the service generation of the One Campaign. The grandparents and children united against the parents…
The respect for institutions that was prevalent during the early ’60s is prevalent with the young again today. The earnest industriousness that was common then is back today. The awareness that we are not self-made individualists, free to be you and me, but emerge as parts of networks, webs and communities - that awareness is back again today.
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Comment by: Martin Gugino
1 02/11/08 9:23 PM | Comment Link |I don’t see anything. Sorry. There are of course bright spots when it comes to people. We all have heroes. But do our heroes have influence to change the way things are going. I do not think so.
We owe trillions of dollars to people who are still eating with sticks (for example).
Comment by: Randy
2 02/12/08 12:08 AM | Comment Link |I have to wonder if the war in Iraq is having a similar effect on this generation as the Vietnam war had on mine. The two wars have some very erie similarities, and it seems the sentiments are the same. Maybe in some twisted way these kind of “police action” wars have a catalyzing affect on the generation that is required to serve in them. I don’t know.
Comment by: David H
3 02/12/08 12:31 AM | Comment Link |One would have hoped that one effect would have been that we (as a nation) had not so blindly gone into this current conflict. I am amazed at the cupidity of many today that they buy so many of the arguments for all of the stupid things our governments would like to do.
As for a new service generation, I know some young people who believe they should help their fellow humans but I wouldn’t say they are the majority. Perhaps people like Barack Obama can do something to galvanize the will of these people, but that remains to be proved. What I am far more ware of is the ennui that seems far more pervasive. Talking to a 20-something this weekend I was amazed to discover she thinks many in her age group believe our political system is completely broken and their votes of no value. In short, she thinks people like her don’t believe this country is a democracy. And certainly not a representative government. They hope Obama will change that, but if not they will simply go back to not caring. There are plenty of distractions after all.
Comment by: Hannah
4 02/12/08 2:22 AM | Comment Link |I like to think that my generation is a service oriented one. Spring break of my senior year, at least 10,000 total college students spent their vacations serving the people of New Orleans gutting houses and serving meals. I have close friends in the peace corps or who are dedicating their lives to health causes in Africa or who spend afternoons working with elementary school reading programs. Maybe I’m just around a lot of people who do those kind of things, but it’s a lot more than nothing. It’s our way of responding to feeling politically helpless.
I don’t see the kind of feet to the pavement fervor that my dad might have seen when he was a college student. Where are all the protest rallies? There’s an annual one here around the anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, but what good is annual lip service?
Comment by: Elaine
5 02/12/08 5:12 PM | Comment Link |In one of those syncronicity (or is that serendipity?) type things - Lani directed me to a website
Idealist
It seems to fit with the topic of service - thought you might find it interesting
Comment by: Rachel
6 02/12/08 9:05 PM | Comment Link |Thanks for that great link, Elaine!
Here is a blog entry by Jim Wallis about the changing attitudes among young Christians: Twenty-Something Evangelicals
Comment by: Herb
7 02/12/08 10:16 PM | Comment Link |Well, I was around during Vietnam, I’m a Vietnam era veteran in fact. The only similarity between Vietnam and Irag is that they are unwinnable and winning can’t be defined in these two wars anyway. Vietnam didn’t start with a big, drug-like rush of patriotism and thirst for revenge like Irag. What’s forgotten among this generation is that Vietnam was fought by draftees in a place no one had heard of. Draftees, they were the ones who did not have the resources to obtain college deferrments or weren’t college material. Volumes have been written about the protesters and their motives but from where I stood it appeared that after about 50 or 60,000 deaths with no end in sight, the exempt ones started feeling not so exempt anymore. Especially when they began the lottery. Also one could probably throw in a good dose of survivor’s guilt. Oh,and the war was escalated from some advisors to a full scale war by JFK. I’m from the sixties generation, JFK was from the WW II generation. JFK was old to us. That generation might have sent my generation in to Vietnam in drug-like rush of patriotism (and the Red Scare).
I’m just saying that I’m from that sixties generation and this generation doesn’t need to look at that generation like their motives were so pure, honorable, altrustic etc.
Now, many of the same people who adored the Clintons in the nineties are calling them narcissistic? They weren’t in the nineties? Or the eighties? Sixties?
Comment by: David H
8 02/13/08 6:38 PM | Comment Link |Herb, interesting insight to the motives of war protestors from the ’60s. It gives me something to ponder.