Hi! I'm a Boomer, and I'm baffled. Among the statements in your 7/310 newsletter:

"The Baby Boomers have collective responsibility for the damage that their generation has done through Reaganomics ; hippie-inspired “free love” and extreme feminism ; a series of mistaken, costly, foreign wars; and the excessive greed that resulted in the near-collapse of the financial system . It will be up to Generation X and Y to repair the damage. The questions is whether Boomers — known, perhaps unfairly, as the Selfish Generation — will let us do that."

Yoohoo! We didn't start the Viet Nam War. Most of us were in diapers when that conflict began. We did, however, shed a lot of blood in a war we didn't fully support; more than 55,000 Boomers died over there. In all the wars we have fought, Viet Nam veterans have received the least amount of thanks and praise for their service - and that is absolutely shameful. And it's hard to find a Boomer peer who actually wanted the USA to go to war in the Gulf or in Iraq or Afghanistan. To send our children to die? I don't remember voting for any of it. Do you? I do remember watching 9/11 from my midtown New York office. What is the proper response to something like that? Would you call it a Boomer issue? I think not. Terrorism cuts across every generation (and ethnicity, and political bent). The way our government handled it may be controversial; the need to address it forcefully is NOT.

Hippie-inspired "free love"? After working our way through college and grad school, and then settling into some 50-hour work weeks, it's a wonder we had time to get any love at all. Unless, of course, you are expressing some hidden resentment that women were finally free to enjoy sex without the ignominy and shame attached to it by previous generations. (BTW Did you know that abortion was *legal* in the early US until the advent of anesthesia, which was deemed to make childbirth too painless, so they had to find some other way to express contempt for women's sexuality? This drama has been playing out for centuries...) For every adolescent rolling in the mud at Woodstock, there were probably 20 others drudging through (usually menial) jobs to graduate and start a life. And, please remember that none of you Gen Xers would be here if somebody didn't get some "free love" from somebody else, hippie-inspired or not. It's love that keeps our planet in business.

Extreme feminism? You wouldn't know much about the difficulties and humiliations of a woman trying to forge a serious career in the 70's and 80's. How quickly you guys have forgotten the struggles your mothers went through to obtain even the basic rights and opportunities you now take for granted! Like equal pay for equal work (one of our main causes) - is that your idea of "extreme feminism"? Reagenomics? Reagan and his crowd were certainly not Boomers. But free markets, entrepreneurial spirit, and capitalism -- those are ideas worth fighting for. (Have you ever been to a bookstore in one of those countries we are alleged to oppress or oppose? Very instructive. We may not be angels, but I'll take Times Square over Red Square any day.)

With all due respect, you may have been reading too many old headlines (which focus on the extremes of the political and social Bell Curve), and you may not have been talking to enough real *people* (e.g. actual Boomers) who struggled through the pitfalls, pratfalls, and perils of our times, possibly embarrassed and angered by the antics of the news-getters but not able to counteract the media circus that seems to attend *every* generation. Selfish? Perhaps. But we seemed to have done a damned fine job of raising our kids - you guys! - and leaving them a world that is very much worth loving, and setting them up for lives that are very much worth living. If you don't feel that way now... trust me, you will, probably when it's just a little bit too late. This I know, because I told my traditionalist-generation mother that I loved her a thousand times, but I never thanked her enough while I still had the chance.

I almost forgot to add this.... If you truly believe the Boomers should step out of the way to free up scarce jobs for Gen Xers and Yers, then you can't truly believe in a competitive free market economy. Would you ask whites to give up their livelihood to make more space for other ethnicities? Would you want to know that your doctor, lawyer, plumber, or brain surgeon got his/her job because he/she met the right demographic criteria (or, heaven forbid, quotas)? I think not! You'd want the best person for the job, period.

Black conservative Thomas Sowell once wrote a boffo editorial equating capitalist ventures with public service. He pointed out that people tended to value the Peace Corps as public service, while devaluing those who entered private enterprise as "selfish". But when his young son suffered an eye injury in a sports game, boyoboy was he glad that his son's ophthalmic surgeon had decided to go to medical school instead of signing up for the Peace Corps.

Private enterprise IS public service, and the "selfish" principles of self-interest and market economics support the lifestyle and the liberties we cherish. As a "selfish" Boomer, I expect to keep working and contributing as long as I breathe. If the market wants what I have to offer, bring'em on! If they don't, tough noogies for me. But the market will decide, not the pitiful wailing of some disappointed post-adolescents who think that they are somehow exempt from the same struggles that every generation has faced. (My grandmother shoveled coal into her furnace. Are you pissed off about having to plug in a space heater? Hope not!)

A decade of toxic generational infighting will do more harm to our society than any short-term dislocations (or long-term shape shifting) in the job market. Them's fightin' words, Mr. Careerist.

A final note: My mother, Edith Wagenstein, worked for some 75 of her 89 years , towards the end as a pro bono tax preparer in the AARP's program for senior citizens. Until her last day, she was a homeowner, a taxpayer, and a contributor to her community and her country. She would have scoffed at your blog posting, and gotten right back to some useful work.

Thanks, Kate. Although I appreciate the appreciation... my main point was not to sub-divide us further, but to UNITE us around the universal value of human worth (regardless of age, race, creed, etc.).

I'm starting to believe that many of our problems stem from an explosion of prosperity caused by advances in technology. We've grown complacent, even lazy, in our civic responsbility. Life may have become just a little bit too easy, or too complicated. (Boomers are sacked out in front of the TV, while Xers are zoned out between their iPod earbuds.) By allowing government to go too far in making decisions for us, we're now taking a bum rap (as a generation) for things over which we have no control.

Time to rebalance! As the Chinese proverb suggests, a time of crisis is also a time of opportunity. The Boomer/Xer tension needs to be addressed, and we need to take back control of our civic destiny by taking a more active, assertive role in what's going on around us.

I don't have a solution, but I hope I started a conversation.