The Greatest Generation?

[John Cole]

From David Halberstam's essay about 9/11, "Who We Are":

"I have always thought the concept, so fashionable in the last few years, of the 'greatest generation' as an exceptional historical foolishness. I say that with a profound admiration of those who survived the Depression and fought in World War II. They bore an uncommonly heavy burden: my father--the man I revere more than anyone else, an immigrant's son who put himself through college and medical school and finished his medical training just in time for the Great Depression was a member of it. But the idea that he belonged to a better generation than that of his father, who had helped bring our family here from the Old Country, would have apppalled him. Generations aren't greater or lesser, weaker, noisier, or more silent. (Mine was supposedly the Silent generation.) They are human beings who respond to different circumstances and different challenges in different ways. Challenged in the right way and properly led, in a free society, they will invariably do the right thing."

Leadership, for Halberstam, however, does not flow only from the President, but must come from all parts of society.

He continues, citing Ginsberg, who once told him the terrible thing about Communism is that all the cliches were true:

"I would add as a corollary: that one of the good things about our democracy is that many of the cliches are also true--you just have to stick around long enough to bear witness."

Halberstam's essay is included in Best American Essays 2002. (It's not a plug for the book.)

John