Social insecurity

Last week the President told us the state of our union is "confident and strong." What he neglected to mention was that it was Opposite Day at the White House, and the definition of "confident" was "blindly arrogant," and "strong" really meant "crashing and burning."\nBut the blame doesn't lie on the current administration alone. The infected wounds of this society have been festering since the 1960s. \nThe Greatest Generation fought Nazi tyranny and died for our freedom. They spurred the economic growth of the 1950s that pulled the United States and the world out of the Great Depression. They even rebuilt Europe and Japan.\nThen the baby boomers came along, a pathetic follow-up. Their self-indulgent, irresponsible egomania has created a world in which they're ashamed to rear their own children. \nWith the environment near ruin and economic difficulties on the horizon, the baby boomers have opted to indulge themselves in accumulated wealth and have left nothing to their heirs but a hole in the ozone layer, nuclear waste and strife.\nThe world we will inherit is more violent than it has ever been in human history because of our parents' short-sightedness. In Iraq and Afghanistan, our weapons are being used against us by people we promised to help 30 years ago. Those terrorists are the men and women who rightly feel betrayed. The animosity that fuels their aggression is the result of big words and empty promises.\nThe gluttons heading for retirement have been feeding on McDonald's, chocolate bars and dollar signs for the better part of a half-century. In America, obesity will soon become the No. 1 cause of death, and reported cases of diabetes have risen 40 percent in the 1990s. \nFor years, the baby boomers have ignored war-torn Africa. I hardly need to mention that the inability or unwillingness to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic will be the death sentence of millions in sub-Saharan Africa, and the solution seems to be to wait until the infected die off. \nThe Greatest Generation ended the genocide of the Jews, are the Sudanese worth any less?\nSocial Security is just another example of the baby boomers' irresponsibility. Congress refuses to put aside partisan politics for the good of themselves and the children they profess to love so much. How can our parents preach "for the children" when almost 36 million Americans live below the poverty line?\nBut I'm generalizing, of course. No individual is at fault. However, there comes a point when we have to say that policymakers at the federal, state and local levels are doing more harm than good. There comes a point when we have to say that the immoral behavior of our society is nothing but the realization of a greedy generation living for its own pleasure and luxury.\nAlthough, it's not as if our generation has exactly done its part. Our own apathy is as destructive as anything our parents have done. What has the under-25 crowd given the world: MTV and TheFacebook. We must get involved and remedy the crises that have developed during the last 50 years. \nOur parents have trained us to hate what they hate and bicker amongst ourselves. Gandhi once said that we're supposed to be the change we want in the world, yet we sit around ranting to each other instead of chanting in picket lines or lobbying causes.\nThe last generation has left us bitterly divided against ourselves. Our campus is divided along party lines and ideologies, when we should be united against the damaging men and women in power that squandered Social Security, increased our national debt to some $7.8 trillion and started wars we have to fight and finish.\nWe always say we're going to be nothing like our parents; let's make that happen.