Not All Boomers
I certainly appreciated the article by Lane Scott in the February issue (“Forever Young”). As a Baby Boomer myself, I would have to say that our generation has caused a myriad of problems for this country. I didn’t like the hippies, the so-called civil rights marchers, or my fellow college “students” who were working on one degree after another to avoid the draft and the possibility of being sent to Vietnam.
But, on the other hand, the 58,220 Baby Boomers who died in Vietnam certainly were not dodging their responsibility. Probably another 100,000 were seriously wounded, both physically and mentally.
I was a lieutenant in the Third Marine Division in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam, in 1969. I would have to say, with all due respect to Prof. Scott, that the young, teenage Baby Boomer Marines that served in Second Platoon, Charlie Company, 11th Battalion, Third Marine Division, were devoted to each other and were some of the most hard-working and dedicated young people that I ever had the honor to serve with, in or out of the military.
We depended on each other in order to survive. I have no doubt that any one of them would have taken a bullet to save his fellow Marines. The only reason that I am alive and here today is because of those teenage Baby Boomers.
I don’t disagree with anything that Ms. Scott wrote in her excellent article, but I just feel that when the Baby Boomer generation is mentioned, some very important members are left out.
—Gene Andrews
Marine Corps veteran
Nashville, Tenn
Prof. Scott replies:
Mr. Andrews is entirely correct that the best of the Baby Boomer generation went to Vietnam and fought for their country. They were cruelly discarded upon their return by the cultural movement piloted by their draft-dodging peers, as I mentioned briefly in the article. Mr. Andrews has my heartfelt appreciation and admiration for the sacrifices and heroic action that he and tens of thousands of his fellow Boomers gave to this country. God bless you and all our brave veterans.
Gun Hypocrisy
Regarding Derek Parker’s review of Gun Curious in the February issue (“Some Honesty From the Left About Guns”), liberals certainly own guns themselves. Your readers may remember the case of the Washington D.C. columnist for the Chicago Tribune, Carl Rowan, who was ever against citizens owning guns.
One night he called the police, believing he had a prowler on his property. When cops arrived, there was Carl, with a gun in his hand. [In 1988, Rowan shot an unarmed teenager who was skinny dipping in his pool at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He was charged for owning an unregistered firearm, but at his trial the jury was deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. Rowan had previously written in a column that anyone illegitimately owning a gun “goes to jail—period.” –Ed.]
New York TV producer David Susskind was famously anti-gun. Viewers began dubbing him a hypocrite. He lived in the (well-guarded) Olympic Towers in Midtown Manhattan, and he and his family had a bodyguard who drove them around in a bulletproof car. To appease his critics, he invited two guys living in a New York halfway house onto his talk show. Susskind admitted he was shocked when both men agreed that it would take only 30 minutes to get a gun on the black market in New York.
—Georgia Makiver
Lansdowne, Pa.
Henpecked President
Paul Gottfried’s year-end reflections on Chronicles’ website (“When Enough Isn’t Enough: Carter’s True Legacy,” Dec. 31, 2024) on the death of former president Jimmy Carter were largely correct. In the eyes of this Canadian, Carter’s appearance as an honorary pallbearer, alongside Cuban dictator Fidel Castro at the 2000 funeral of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, speaks volumes about Carter’s “true legacy.”
What I find curious is that in the obituaries I have read, there is little more than passing mention of Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, who died in 2023. Carter’s election in 1976 owed a great deal to his image as a churchgoing Christian and Sunday School teacher dedicated to defending biblical American values. Once he entered the White House, however, the elements of the Democratic Party that had seemingly been crushed in 1972 returned to the surface, notably the feminist crusade for the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution (ERA) banning discrimination on the basis of sex. In 1982, the campaign for the ERA ultimately came up short of the requisite 38-state majority.
Against the background of the ERA’s history, Rosalynn’s true colors as the most “activist” First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt became evident. Rosalynn fiercely supported the ERA and appeared in public alongside pro-abortion figures such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Bella Abzug, winning the praise of former president of National Organization for Women Eleanor Smeal, who called Rosalynn a “cherished ally of the feminist movement.” As First Lady, she met with ERA activists and leaders once a month in the White House. Rosalynn insisted she and Jimmy were not “pro-abortion,” but the company she kept in the White House and on the campaign trail raised many doubts about the political nature of her husband’s presidency.
Additionally, Rosalynn sat in on Carter’s cabinet meetings and briefings and, though she said nothing during them, she and Jimmy by all accounts worked closely together in the White House. Jimmy later said that she “was my equal partner in everything I accomplished.”
Thus, among the various reasons Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980 was, thanks to Rosalynn’s profile, the growing identification of radical feminism with the Carter White House. By the November election that year, countless Moral Majority voters, who may have cast a ballot for Carter in 1976 thinking he, like them, defended traditional family values, had clearly changed their minds.
—Ian Dowbiggin
Cornwall, Prince Edward Island
Canada
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