Losing ‘The Greatest Generation’
Matt Pearl
There is an important group of figures in our culture from which we are losing members daily: I am referring to veterans of the Second World War.
Over 75 years have passed since Pearl Harbor, and the remaining few who served in the most destructive military conflict in the history of humanity are into their 90s by now.
There is nothing for it: our lives have a natural beginning and a natural ending, and the fact that an individual has served in such a war does nothing to fend off the ravages of time and passage of years.
Still, it makes me sad that the WWII vets are leaving us, for in their memories and tied to their service are truths that we ought not to allow ourselves to forget. Every year that passes means that fewer of us have memory of a war that held the threat of wiping out freedom in this nation.
And, naturally, as such a threat becomes historical rather than remembered, it also becomes less real. Do we truly value our freedom the way Americans did over 70 years ago, when we were sending our young soldiers across the world to fight European fascism?
Perhaps we do have the proper respect for our freedoms and the price others paid to secure them–but what comes next? Tom Brokaw called the veterans of World War II The Greatest Generation. When they have left us, who gets to be the greatest living generation?
The Baby Boomers? Generation X? The Millennials? Or this new ‘Generation Y’ to which my children will belong? Who knows the best future course of this nation?
I often wonder where the balance should fall between our valuing the sacrifices and lessons of the past with the specific circumstances and information available now in making decisions for tomorrow. It’s a great conservative-liberal divide.
Conservatives believe that if anything has worked before, the right thing to do is to repeat it. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Liberals believe that beings moving forward in time should look ahead, not back in the past for answers.
One ideology dictates that the answers to humanity’s problems are in the past; the other asserts that only in tomorrow will we find our next course of action.
The shame: we hire all of these people to representative posts in our government to fight out which set of ideas should rule the day–when each could learn so much from the other if they were to cooperate.
You can look back at the great explorers like Columbus, or Corte´s, or Leif Ericson and find justification to explore the universe: it is there, so we must discover its secrets.
But you can’t go to space without looking forward, putting faith and research into new technologies and discoveries.
America used to be able to harmonize its past and future better. When did we go wrong? Perhaps it was when each of the two major parties decided that there was only one true interpretation of freedom: its own.
When the soldiers fighting for the Allied Forces in World War II headed into hell in the 1940s, they did it to preserve the way of life that had been the gold standard of humanity for many years already: one where the people possessed both personal freedom and the power to elect their leaders in free elections.
In other words, to ensure the freedom of tomorrow, the liberties of today needed to be preserved. That’s why they’re The Greatest Generation, folks, and you and I are a distant second to them in so many respects.
Matt Pearl owns and operates newspapers in King City, Albany, and Grant City.
