tabacco
My RSS Feeds
Diana West, Author of "The Death Of The Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization" - She Hits The Nail On The Head Re US BABY BOOMERS! - RI10
posted Sunday, 26 August 2007
Diana West, Author
of “The Death Of
The Grown-Up: How
America’s Arrested
Development Is
Bringing Down
Western Civilization”
- She Hits The Nail
On The Head Re US
BABY BOOMERS! -
RI10
LOU DOBBS TONIGHT
Housing Crisis Threatens Middle Class; Iraq on the Brink
Aired August 23, 2007 - 18:00 ET
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SYLVESTER: President Bush says the battle against Islamic extremists will take a long time.
My next guest says that is, in part, because of the American people.
In her new book "Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization", Diana West claims that the baby boomer generation is too spoiled and self-absorbed to understand America's many challenges, including the radical Islamist terror threat.
And she joins me now.
This is a fascinating read, I mean on so many different levels. But I want to first start off that there -- you open it up and you talk about your family situation, how you spent a year in Ireland.
DIANA WEST, AUTHOR, "THE DEATH OF THE GROWN-UP," "THE WASHINGTON TIMES": Yes.
SYLVESTER: ...and then fast-forward, what the events of 9/11 really helped shape and form this book.
Tell me about that.
WEST: The year in Ireland was significant only because it took me out of American culture and then put me back into a different person. I think any time you leave your culture; you come back a little bit someone else.
I actually started working on the book about 10 years ago, back when we had a president named Clinton. We had a big scandal involving a White House intern. And what really struck me about the wheel way the scandal unfolded was the fact that I decided Bill Clinton thought the country was more grown up than he was, because if you remember those first televised pictures of Bill Clinton on the revelations about Monica Lewinsky, he looked like he was a cooked goose.
And in retrospect, it struck me that I believe he thought he was going to be punished. He wasn't.
And when I started thinking back on those -- that period, I wanted to find out what had happened to us?
How had we gotten to the point where the country was not more grown up than this particular president, who did seem like the poster boy for the death of the grown up?
SYLVESTER: When you talk about grown ups, you also have, in your first chapter, you have some interesting statistics. More adults ages 18 to 49 watch the Cartoon Network than watch CNN.
(LAUGHTER)
SYLVESTER: The average video gamester was 18 in 1990 and now he's going on 30.
How does this all factor in?
WEST: Well, I think that it -- it factors in, in showing us that we are a culture of perpetual adolescents. We haven't really gotten to the point where we rediscovered maturity. It kind of went out of style, I guess in the 1960s. But we really seem to be frozen with the sort of model of the sort of counterculture cool, never quite growing up, flaunting -- flouting authority kind of figure. And that, I think, we do owe to our baby boomers. And that is why we see these statistics like this, and many others.
SYLVESTER: And how does this factor in -- tie it all in together -- on the war on terror?
Because your concern is that people are essentially just tuning out, not paying attention, not focused enough, that they are essentially, you know, we don't have grown ups in this country.
WEST: Well, I think that's true. I think that what we saw in that kind of countercultural period in the 1960s was a kind of leveling of all sorts of hierarchies -- hierarchies of learning and hierarchies of authority. And from that emerged the kind of leveling of culture. And I think from that comes multiculturalism, in which no culture is any better, any different than any other except, of course, Western culture usually is denigrated.
And from that, I think we get to this point where it becomes very hard for people to discuss the war on radical Islam. It becomes very difficult for people to assess frankly the problems facing us, because we don't want to be considered mean or not inclusive.
I think inclusion has become our great virtue and yet there's a big difference between preserving openness in a society and preserving tolerance. You can't go on forever being tolerant because you are going to be subsumed.
SYLVESTER: And you also talk, as part of that, that we lose our identity.
WEST: Yes.
SYLVESTER: We have a full screen that I want to pull up.
WEST: OK.
SYLVESTER: You have a chapter called "The Real Culture War", where you call multiculturalism a faith more dangerous to us than jihadist terrorists.
You write: "From the multicultural teachings of the politically correct classroom, we as a culture have learned to censor incorrect thoughts. In the absence of adults, we have found ways to sidestep taxing responsibilities".
What did you mean by that?
WEST: Well, it's kind of like the enemy within. I think we've trained ourselves to be nonjudgmental to a fault. And, perhaps, inspired by very kindly sorts of notions. But there is in this -- in this to make judgments, to make distinctions, a loss of ourselves.
And so, to me, the multicultural paradigm that seems to be motivating so much of our discussions fail to allow us to face facts, discuss things rationally as adults, as mature people.
And so that -- that is basically what I mean. I feel like we could take on the threats posed to our liberty by expansionist Islam, but not unless we can talk about them.
SYLVESTER: Now, we only have about 30 seconds left.
WEST: Yes.
SYLVESTER: What are some of the solutions?
Because, clearly, you've identified several problems. It's the loss of identity, this, essentially this multiculturalism, that we don't have grown ups in this country.
What are some of the solutions?
WEST: Well, I think the solutions come with trying to realize where we were and how far we've come down, in a sense, and looking back at that figure about the 30-year-old gamester. And it really also goes back to discovering what makes us Western, what makes us a liberty belt -- based culture -- and -- which is a more benevolent society than what we're up against.
So I think it comes to facing facts about who we are and why we need to stay that way.
SYLVESTER: Diana West.
It's a great book.
It's called "The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization".
WEST: Oh, thank you.
SYLVESTER: It's been a pleasure. Appreciate it.
WEST: Thank you, Lisa.
SYLVESTER: Thanks.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/23/ldt.01.html
http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/12780000/12789855.gif
Tabacco: I consider myself both a funnel and a filter. I funnel information, not readily available on the Mass Media, which is ignored and/or suppressed. I filter out the irrelevancies and trivialities to save both the time and effort of my Readers and bring consternation to the enemies of Truth & Fairness! When you read Tabacco, if you don’t learn something NEW, I’ve wasted your time.
In 1981's 'Body Heat', Kathleen Turner said, "Knowledge is power".
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization) – Think Tank For Other 95% Of World
comments