Reason Magazine: Nick Gillespie Interviewing P.J. O'Rourke: Millennials & Baby Boomers

Source:Reason Magazine- political humorist and author P.J. O'Rourke.

Source:The New Democrat

"Just this whole process of going through the baby boom's history, I began to realize what a nicer society—kinder, more decent society—that we live in today than the society when I was a kid," says P.J. O'Rourke, best-selling author of Holidays in Hell, Parliament of Whores, and many other titles.

O'Rourke sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie at Freedom Fest 2014 in Las Vegas to discuss his new book, The Baby Boom: How it Got That Way and It Wasn't My Fault and I'll Never Do it Again. As the father of three kids born between 1997 and 2004, he also lays down some thoughts about millennials, noting that they live in a much nicer, more tolerant world than the one in which he grew up. "I don’t think my 10-year old boy has ever been in a fist fight," says O'Rourke, who was born in 1947. "I mean there might be a little scuffling but I don’t think he’s has ever had that kind of violent confrontation that was simply part of the package when I was a kid."

He also feels that the internet "fragments information" in a way that destroys the sweep of history, at least at first. "You end up with mosaic information," he says. "Now, I think over time the kids put these mosaics together but I don’t think the internet itself lends itself to the sweep of history."

The interview also includes a tour of O'Rourke's long and varied career in journalism, from his humble beginnings writing for an underground alt-weekly to his time as editor of National Lampoon and his incredible work as a foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone to his current position as columnist at the Daily Beast. 

A prominent libertarian, O'Rourke also discusses the difficulties in selling a political philosophy devoted to taking power away from politicians.

"If libertarianism were easy to explain and if it weren't so easy to exaggerate the effects of libertarianism—people walking around with 'Legalize Heroin!' buttons and so on—I think it would've been done already," says O'Rourke. "But the problem is, of course, is that libertarianism isn't political. It's anti-political, really. It wants to take things out of the political arena." 

From Reason Magazine

I feel kind of strange talking about the Baby Boom Generation since I'm a Gen-Xer born in the mid-1970s the tail end of even my generation and come from parents who aren't Baby Boomers born in the the 1930s. So I didn't grow up with boomers in my family, at least in the household, even though I have uncles who are Boomers. So what I know about this huge generation the Baby Boom Generation, is what I've seen from talking to Baby Boomers as an adult and what I've read and heard about this generation. What I've seen from the news and movies.

But here's what I like about the Baby Boom Generation. The 1960s generation which is really what I call them, is the generation that freed Americans to be Americans. Pre-lets say 1963 or so, America was in long extensive era from the early teens or so and on where the country didn't seem to change, at least culturally. Where the idea of what it meant to be an American was universal. Guy grows up, goes to college, gets a good job, marries a young woman, they have kids. The woman stays home and raises their kids. No romantic couples living together pre-marriage and certainly no pre-marital sex.

The Boomers finally blew up the 1950s and moved America away from that with the Cultural Revolution and created an era where Americans became free to be Americans. And what I mean by that is that we are supposed to an individualistic society where Americans are supposed to be themselves and live their own lives. But we really didn't become that society until about fifty-years ago. Which in the grand scheme of American history is a fairly short period of time. Since then if anything Americans have become freer culturally and personally.