This content was created by Dennis Prager. This content was uploaded by Dennis Prager. This is a YouTube conversation titled "Helen Andrews: The Effects of the Boomer Generation on America" (published 2021-02-03). It features host Dennis Prager interviewing author Helen Andrews. Andrews argues that baby boomers have been "institution destroyers," undermining family, church, law, economy and other institutions, while Prager reflects on similar generational upheaval during the Vietnam-era campus protests. Andrews' book "Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster" is mentioned and promoted.
for how my generation has ruined things in this country. What's your take on boomers?
I know and love a lot of boomers. My parents are boomers and they're wonderful, and I'm sure you're one of the good ones too. But as a millennial who's about to inherit the civilization the boomers are passing on, I have to say an objective assessment of the boomers' record would find them to have failed to pass on the civilization that they inherited in the same state that it was when they got it. I think the boomers have been institution destroyers. Anything that constrains individual choice, they have knocked down like wrecking balls. And that's true across the board, from the institutions of the family the church, to the economy and business, technology, the law and the Constitution. They've just been institution destroyers, and millennials are growing up amid the wreckage.
Couldn't agree with you more. And that's my generation, and I felt it from college when I saw— during the Vietnam War, I saw it when I was at Columbia— I saw students wrecking Columbia. They would go into professors' offices. They would— this was before computers, so if you took the physical hard copy of a professor's work, he was bereft of that work forever. And I will never forget, they went into a professor's office, stole all his work, and he was bereft of his work. And I remember my generation chanting, "Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh!" So I have a tough question for you, and we'll take a break and then I'd love you to answer it. What do you say about the generation that raised the boomers? How did the boomers become a wrecking ball? The book is Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. It is up at DennisPrager.com. Helen Andrews, the author.
