Posted by: David Lantz
in MyBlog on May 19, 2011
Introduction
In a book titled Generations: The History of America’s Future, Published in 1991 by William Strauss and Neil Howe, the authors looked at 13 generations of Americans as they attempted to envision the sort of crisis their analysis of history predicted America would confront by the year 2020. Writing in 1991, however, Strauss and Howe did make this now prescient statement:
One rather safe prediction experts often make about elderly Boomers is that they will collide with underfunded federal pension and health-care systems, starting in the mid-2010s. … Boomers will force a dramatic turn in the politics of Social Security. In the 2010s, they will lay the terms of an entirely new intergenerational “deal,” snapping the chain of ever-rising benefits that G.I.s insisted would never end. Boom leaders will thoroughly recast – and probably rename – Social Security and Medicare. … Affluent Boomers will receive little economic recompense from a lifetime of payroll taxes paid to support others. Yet in a turnabout from the G.I. entitlement ethic, Boomers will derive self-esteem from knowing they are not receiving rewards from the community.
Borrowing a metaphor from a short story written by Nathanial Hawthorne in the early 1800s titled “The Gray Champion,” William Strauss and Neil Howe likened the Boomer generation to this mythical guardian of American liberties. The authors of Generations: The History of America’s Future did not envision just one Gray Champion, but rather a generation that produces many such leaders. They conclude their conversation about the prospect of such future Gray Champions (individuals who would arise out of the Baby Boom generation and whom, I believe, the Tea Party movement now embodies) this way:
Let us hope that the old Boomers will look within themselves and find something richer than apocalypse. If they see (and assert) themselves as beacons of civilization, younger Americans may well look up to them as G.I.s did to the great Missionary leaders: as elders wise beyond the comprehension of youth. If the Gray Champions among them can seize this historic opportunity, they can guide a unified national community through the gates of history to a better world beyond.
As a member of the Boomer generation, I see myself as one of these many such Gray Champions. And so, today, I wish to provide some insights to the would-be Republican Nominee for President of the United States who will seek my vote, as well as my active grassroots support.
