Modesty Manifesto

[jk the sooner fan]

the root cause of our debt crisis


interesting article

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/opinion/11brooks.html?_r=1

[MamaMia]

Being humble is almost a thing of the past these days.

[JohnnyMack]

Good article, except when he references this generation shoving costs off on the next, which one is he talking about? The baby boomers, right?

[jk the sooner fan]

Good article, except when he references this generation shoving costs off on the next, which one is he talking about? The baby boomers, right?

well he says it all starts in the 70's, so i would assume the baby boomers

[TUSooner]

Being humble is almost a thing of the past these days.

I (still) blame Muhammad Ali.

[JohnnyMack]

well he says it all starts in the 70's, so i would assume the baby boomers

Oh. I was tired, teething baby means no sleep and poor reading comprehension.

[soonercruiser]

Being humble is almost a thing of the past these days.

I blame the Muppets and this song....

tn1Qolv4ntQ

[3rdgensooner]

Citizenship, after all, is built on an awareness that we are not all that special but are, instead, enmeshed in a common enterprise. Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to the nation. I wonder if Americans are unwilling to support the sacrifices that will be required to avert fiscal catastrophe in part because they are less conscious of themselves as components of a national project.

Perhaps the enlargement of the self has also attenuated the links between the generations. Every generation has an incentive to push costs of current spending onto future generations. But no generation has done it as freely as this one. Maybe people in the past had a visceral sense of themselves as a small piece of a larger chain across the centuries. As a result, it felt viscerally wrong to privilege the current generation over the future ones, in a way it no longer does.

It’s possible, in other words, that some of the current political problems are influenced by fundamental shifts in culture, involving things as fundamental as how we appraise ourselves. Addressing them would require a more comprehensive shift in values.
Wait, so he's suggesting that the political problems are caused by an inflation of self among those currently in college as compared to 30 years ago? That doesn't make sense.

[Bourbon St Sooner]

That article makes no sense. I mean just come to sf.com and look at the high degree of humility displayed. This web site is a beacon for the rest of the country.