Posted 9:11 AM by magnu231
Lucky?

Great article by John Derbyshire here. He posits that he is part of the "luckiest" generation, missing all of the horrors of the 20th century, while perhaps dying before what he predicts to be the horrors of the 21st century. And I would agree with some of his conclusions (although not all). But I think he has perhaps fallen victim to the defeatism that comes with age, on occasion. Whit Chambers was one of my favorite writers, but it is now almost amusing to read the depths of despair that he fell to, and the gloom that he predicted would overtake human history. Communism has been beaten (perhaps temporarily), and we're living in what by almost any measure are the "good times" for the world in general. Sure I see the problems on the horizon, the looming welfare state, the corruption of the political system, the increasing morally bankrupt, lazy, and "soft", American populace, and of course the (again) rising threats of fascism, socialism, and religious terrorism. But let's not be defeatist. Previous generations have defeated threats that the generation before it (who had also defeated tremendous threats) never thought conquerable. Like Faulkner, I refuse to believe in the end of man (or America), at least until I am old, and existance becomes less tenable.


http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200511230838.asp

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