The Dumbest Generation

Copyright

THE DUMBEST GENERATION. Copyright © 2001 by Michael Graham. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Warner Books,

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

ISBN: 978-0-7595-2451-4

First eBook Edition: May 2001

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

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My favorite political postlude was recorded in The New York Times, the day after Goldwater's overwhelming defeat by President Johnson. An elderly lady was back from the polls and asked her neighbor, who had gone out earlier, whether she had cast her eleventh consecutive vote for a Republican candidate. No, she replied. She had voted for Lyndon Johnson, because she had been "afraid" to vote for Goldwater.

"Why?" was the startled question.

"Because he will take away my TV."

The questioner laughed. "No, no, no, Edith. Senator Goldwater is opposed to the T.V.A., not TV."

"I know, I know. But I just didn't want to take any chances." —As recounted by William F. Buckley, Jr.

* * *

We are the sons and daughters of the American revolution. We are the descendants of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and, later, of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. We are the promise keepers of the greatest, most ambitious experiment in individual liberty ever conceived, an experiment nurtured on blood, upheld by laws, and envied around the world.

We are the American people. And we are as dumb as a box of rocks.

Just months into the new century (yep, we even got that wrong), any serious analysis of contemporary America leads to the inescapable conclusion that, while our parents and grandparents may have been the "Greatest Generation," ours is the dumbest.